but still like dust i'll rise
by threecankeepasecret
Summary: Elena returns from the Other Side human. With the knowledge that the only thing more valuable than doppelganger blood is human doppelganger blood, and the desperate need to get out Mystic Falls at any cost, Elena turns to the one place she's sure she'll be safe: New Orleans.
1. this business of surviving

If she'd been thinking it through, maybe she would have taken a plane—fifteen hours in a car was a long time, especially now that she was human again—but she hadn't been thinking it through, had been doing her best not to think at all, ever since—since—

She pulled up to the curb, turned off the car, yanked out the keys. Inhale, exhale. She couldn't go there, not now, not when she was seconds away from ruining her life.

She took a few long gulps from her water bottle—laced with vervain and wolfsbane both, of course, she might have been bordering on suicidal but she didn't have a death wish, and this was the capital of the supernatural world. She should have come here before, been here forever, the doppelganger never stood a chance in the normal world, she'd known Katherine, she'd known she could never be free.

She grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, and pushed open the car door. Her legs trembled when she stepped on the ground—fifteen hours straight of driving, come on, Elena, that really wasn't the brightest idea—and the world seemed to spin as she came to her feet. She didn't waver, she'd been drained of blood often enough that she could hold herself upright through basically anything, but she adjusted her priorities nonetheless; food, then Klaus. Klaus could wait.

The thing about vampirism was that hunger always meant bloodlust, and surviving vampirism meant ignoring hunger; just because Elena was human again didn't mean she'd shaken that habit.

New Orleans was beautiful; even through her own despair and misery, Elena could appreciate the buildings, the shimmer of the sunlight on the streets, the music, sweet and bold, weaving around her like part of the city itself. She made way for a nearby restaurant; wind chimes rang out as she pushed open the door, and the scents of warm food and spices wafted toward her. She made a beeline for the bar.

A pretty blonde, a few years older than Elena, walked up a moment later. "Welcome!" she said. Her smile didn't reach her eyes—or maybe that was Elena, projecting her own misery on everyone around her. "How are we doing today?"

Elena inhaled. She was depressed and pissed off, but she didn't have to be rude. "Not great," she said. "I've been driving for fifteen hours straight, and I only just realized how _hungry_ I am." She forced herself to laugh. "Could I get an order of whatever fried food you make best?"

The girl smiled, for real this time; her nametag read 'Cami.' "Sure thing," she said, nodding so her ponytail bounced against her neck. As always, Elena attention was drawn to the girl's jugular, but instead of hunger or desire or even self-loathing, she just felt hollow.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" asked Cami.

"Oh, yeah," said Elena, "thanks." She felt like Alaric, suddenly, drinking before noon. Alaric was alive at last, perfectly fine, probably blowing up her phone, leaving messages torn between frustrated concern and guilt-ridden apologies. "I'll get a bourbon on the rocks, please."

"That kind of day, huh?" asked the bartender, the corner of her lips turning up. "Well, I can't really judge you," she said. "I will need to see your ID, though."

Elena hadn't needed an ID since she'd gained the gift of compulsion, but then again, this city was supposed to be vampire central. The bartender was probably on vervain, anyway. She couldn't blame the woman for doing her job, but she needed that drink.

Elena shifted in her seat, and sighed. No going back now, she supposed. "Do you… happen to know someone named Klaus?" she asked.

Cami went rigid, and then seemed to deflate.

"Yeah," said Elena, with a wry smile. "Trust me, that's how I used to react, too."

"Are you from around here?" asked Cami, frowning, but with her wits about her again. "I had you pegged for a tourist."

"Not a tourist, a visitor," corrected Elena. "Klaus's visitor, to be precise, but he doesn't know that yet." She took a deep breath, and met Cami's eyes. "I'm not twenty-one," she admitted, "but I can't deal with him sober."

"Are you here to kill him?" asked Cami. Despite her earlier reaction, she seemed opposed to the idea.

"No," said Elena. "Been there, failed at that."

Cami seemed hesitant._ I just lost the love of my life_, Elena wanted to shout, _and I'm here to offer myself as a blood bag because I had to leave and had nowhere else to go_, but she just looked up, trying to plead.

Finally, Cami sighed. "Yeah, okay," she said, sighing. "It's not like there's anyone left to care."

The old Elena would have been tempted to ask what she meant, what had happened, but this Elena couldn't bring herself to care. She accepted the drink with a murmured "thank you", and relished in the burning at the back of her throat. Her food arrived a few minutes later—she was pretty confident that it was fried chicken—and she gestured for a refill, which Cami granted with a tight smile.

A few minutes later, the wind chimes rang out again, and a voice—a voice that still haunted her nightmares, sometimes—called out, "Where is she, then?"

Elena swallowed the remainder of her class, and the spun on her stool to meet Klaus's wild gaze.

Klaus seemed to freeze, not blinking, not breathing, just staring. After a lifetime, he swallowed.

"Elena Gilbert," he said at last, and Elena pursed her lips in acknowledgment. "I must admit, love, you are the very last person I expected to see here."

"Who did you expect?" she asked.

"Well, sweetheart," said Klaus, striding forward to lean on the bar next to her, "I received a call from the lovely Camille, saying that I had a visitor, a girl, who'd decided to drink away her woes before seeing me."

"You thought I was Caroline?" asked Elena, smiling despite herself.

Klaus scoffed. "In what world would I greet our dear Caroline so harshly?" he asked. Cami brought out another drink, and Elena had started to reach for it when Klaus snatched it and took a long gulp. "Truth be told," he continued, after a minute of pondering, "I rather thought it might be the Bennett witch, here to beg for help with this so-called disintegration of the Other—

Elena's glass shattered across the floor, and she realized that her hand was still trembling. Klaus shot her a sharp look.

"Bonnie's dead," said Elena, choking on the words as she forced them out. "Dead for good, there is no more other side, everyone who was there either found peace or is—gone, destroyed—I barely made it back to this side in time, Damon—"

She couldn't make herself say it, but she knew Klaus understood from his sharp intake of breath. "Stefan?" he asked, his voice low, and then: "Caroline?"

"Alive," Elena confirmed. "Stefan died for a bit, but he came back."

"And how exactly did you make it back from the realm of the dead?" asked Klaus.

Elena sighed. "There was—a spell," she said. "It weakened Bonnie so that we could pass through—our witch stopped chanting just before they could—"

Klaus sighed, and sank into the chair next to her, taking another long gulp. "Well," he said at last. "I'm sorry for your loss, sweetheart—more sorry than I'd usually be—but I don't see what any of that has to do with me." He swirled the contents of his glass. "If it were Elijah you were here for, I might understand, but—"

Elena forced the words out before she could have second thought. "I came back from the dead, but I didn't come back a vampire," she blurted out, and then knocked back what was left of her drink.

Klaus slammed his glass down with such force that Elena started, and then looked up at her. "What did you say?" he asked.

"I came back human," she whispered, her eyes burning. She refused to cry, though, not again, and especially not here.

Klaus stared at her, and then shook his head. "And you came to me—"

"Isn't this what you've always wanted?" asked Elena, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "Your doppelganger, your human doppelganger, with an endless supply of blood and no plans to run away and no Salvatore brother to try and rescue her?"

Klaus's lips parted. He was almost snarling. "I don't recall you ever being invested in me getting what I want, love."

"I can't be in Mystic Falls," said Elena, her voice breaking. "I just can't, and even if I wanted to, it's controlled by travellers now, travellers who have spent the last few months collecting my doppelganger blood, and if I leave Mystic Falls, I get chased by witches who keep trying to kill me so that the travellers can't use my doppelganger blood, Damon's gone, Stefan's—not Stefan, not anymore, Bonnie's gone, and I'm not even a vampire anymore." She sucked in a deep breath, and realized that Klaus was still there, staring at her intently. She'd half-expected him to be gone. "I'm not safe," she said, "not anywhere, not anymore."

"You've come to make a deal," said Klaus, sitting back on his stool. He raised his glass at Cami, and then gestured to Elena's as well. "I'll pick up her tab, love," he called after her, and then looked back at Elena.

"Not a deal," said Elena.

Klaus blinked, and then smirked. "No?"

"You aren't going to kill anyone I love," said Elena, "and don't tell me I'm making demands, because you were never going to. You won't kill Caroline, not ever—you won't kill Stefan, or Jeremy, or Matt—you probably won't even kill Tyler, not unless he threatens you again, and I can live with that."

"Then what do you want from me?" asked Klaus, accepting another drink.

Elena accepted hers as well. She'd had more than was smart, especially considering the time, but it didn't matter.

"I don't want anything from you that you don't want to give me," she told him. "I want what you've always wanted from me. I want to stay here, with you, give you my doppelganger blood whenever you want it as long as you protect me from everyone else who's after it as well."

Klaus was still smirking, but it seemed somewhat tame, now. "What about wanting to live your life?" he asked. "To stay in your home?"

"What home?" asked Elena, and then took another long drink. "What life?"

"Do I have to worry about you killing yourself on me?" asked Klaus, his voice tinged with amusement.

Elena scowled at him. "I've never wanted to die," she told him. "Given the choice, I'd rather it be me that die than the people I love, but it's too late for that, isn't it."

Klaus grinned, looked down at his drink, and then looked up, his expression sober. "Well," he told her, holding up his glass. "Welcome to New Orleans."

She touched her glass to his, and drained it in one gulp.

. . .

Never, in the year and a half since she'd met Klaus, and with the possible exception of the night of the sacrifice, had he been this polite to her. Polite was the only way to describe him, though; he'd paid for her food and drinks, held open the door for her, grabbed her bag from her trunk and carried it for her, held out a hand to stabilize her when she stumbled.

"…once we get to the compound, you can get me your account information, and I'll send someone to return the car to the airport," Klaus was saying.

"What are you talking about? That's not a rental car," said Elena. "Didn't you look at the license plate?"

Klaus paused, and then groaned. "Please," he said, "please tell me you stopped somewhere for the night, and did not drive for fifteen hours straight in your condition."

"You mean humanity?" asked Elena.

Klaus rolled his eyes. "Rule number one," he said, starting up the walking again, "you are not going to ruin our deal by getting into a stupid car accident and wasting your precious blood all over leather seats and highways."

There was a part of Elena that wanted to tell him he couldn't set rules, but there was a much greater part of her that didn't care, that just wanted a needle in her arm and a bottle in her hand and to never have to think about anything ever again.

"I told you, it isn't a deal," she said. She was glad it was Klaus she was with, though, because making petty barter with Klaus was a lot easier than dealing with Caroline's coddling or Stefan's resentment or Alaric's misguided attempts to parent. "It's an understanding. Which, by the way, you should probably warn Rebekah about, because I really can't remember whether she wants to kill me at the moment."

"Ah," said Klaus, his pace slowing. "Well. That won't be a problem, seeing as Rebekah is no longer with us."

Elena stopped cold, her breath hitching in her throat. "No longer with us?" she repeated. It was only Rebekah, but—

"Oh, no, Elena, no, she's perfectly fine," said Klaus, the words rushing out faster than they should have. "She left New Orleans… months ago. She's alive."

Elena could hardly hear him over the sound of her heart pounding against her ribcage, but she heard him. She reached out a hand to find a wall and steady herself, and felt Klaus clutch her elbow. She focused, _inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale_, and finally, pulled away.

"Sorry," she said. "I guess I'm drunker than I thought."

"Poor choice of words on my part, as well," said Klaus, a half-hearted laugh in his voice. "It's no matter, we're almost there."

After a year of reluctant visits to Klaus's Mystic Falls mansion, the compound was not what she'd expected. There was no sign of the regal carpets and shimmering staircases she'd grown to expect, and where there had usually been silence, loneliness, or tense civility, there was—

"Wow," said Elena, staring at the bodies strewn across the floor of the compound. "You've been having fun."

Klaus groaned. "Hayley!" He strode forward. "Hayley, where are you—"

Elena blinked. "Hayley?" she asked. "As in, Tyler's werewolf friend?" She remembered the girl, but she more clearly remembered her betrayal, how that had led to the second sacrifice, how Klaus—she pressed her eyes closed. It was too late for her to remember the array of reasons she had to hate Klaus. And she'd wanted this.

She opened her eyes to see Klaus turning around, eyes wide. He took a deep breath.

"There's a lot for me to catch you up on," he told her, as she noticed the clear vampire bite marks in one of the bodies' throats.

She met his eyes. "Yeah," she said. "A lot."


	2. broken hearts (put them in a drawer)

Once Klaus has given her the shorthand of what happened (which, wow. Klaus had a baby? Hayley was a hybrid? Klaus's _mother_ was still interfering? Elena had a fair number of memories of Esther, most of which were defined by paralyzing fear, all of which were still tinged with all-consuming loathing over what the woman had done to Alaric), Elena wasn't sure what to say.

"Surprised you took me up on my offer," she said, trying to inject humor into the inflection of her voice, "now that you can make hybrids without me."

"The baby died," Klaus said shortly. Elena blinked, inhaled, her mind flashing back to the time Jeremy had killed Kol, to Klaus's terrifying, unhinged rage. This Klaus wasn't like that, though; he seemed bitter and resentful, but still sane, or as sane as Klaus got.

She wasn't totally convinced that Klaus was telling the entire truth, but it wasn't like she could call him out on her suspicions, so she just said, "Oh. I'm sorry."

Klaus closed his eyes for a second. "You don't believe me, do you?" he said, and Elena was reminded for a second of how well she and Klaus actually knew each other, despite everything, of how many times she had bargained with him, hurt him, been hurt by him, of the time she'd threatened to kill herself to keep Alaric from killing him, of threatening him and conspiring against him and conspiring with him, and how Klaus had known her face for a thousand years and a thousand years of her ancestry had bred a knowledge and fear of Klaus into her very veins.

"I don't believe you're telling me the whole story," Elena settled on saying, keeping her gaze steady until her met her eyes. "You don't have to, though. It's fine."

She thought she was telling the truth—after all, it wasn't like she was all that invested in Original family drama—but she knew she was lying the moment she said it, and she could tell that he knew too. Her heart drummed painfully against her ribcage. _How dare he fake grief to me, of all people?_

"It's a dangerous story to know," Klaus said.

Elena pursed her lips. "I've got vervain in my system right now," she told him, "but once it's out, you can compel me not to talk about it."

Two years ago, it would have been a meaningless offer, and Klaus would have laughed in her face. _You think you can bargain with me?_ he would have said._ I could drain the vervain from your bloodstream and compel you to do anything I like and you'd be powerless to stop me._ But this isn't two years ago, and the both of them are on shaky ground, their new relationship entirely defined by the construct of an understanding.

Klaus nodded, and Elena knew he was agreeing to the plan. "About the vervain, though," he said. "Obviously I can't use vervain-laced blood to make hybrids."

"I've got wolfsbane in me now too," Elena told him, and he shot her a look, like, _really_? "I didn't know how long it would take me to find you," she said, "and frankly, until I did, I was a walking target. It would have been a death wish to stroll the streets unprotected."

"I'm surprised you can stomach wolfsbane," Klaus said, which was not at all what she was expecting. "Most humans find it makes them ill—not the way it affects wolves, of course, but enough for an upset stomach, maybe even a slight fever."

"I think we both know that when it comes to the supernatural, I'm not most humans," Elena said, and Klaus's lips quirked up into a slight smirk. "I don't know. Maybe doppelgangers are just built for survival."

"Ironic," Klaus said, "seeing as you're supposed to be born to die."

Elena once would have taken offense, but the fact was that he was right, in a morbid way. "I think Katherine proved that wrong," Elena said. "She kind of turned survival into an art form."

She couldn't keep the resentment out of her voice, and Klaus's gaze turned appreciative.

"I don't have to tell you that this isn't a safe city to be in," Klaus said, walking towards her. "Apart from me needing your blood clean, wolfsbane and vervain aren't terrible ideas."

"So we set up a weekly time," she said, "and I make sure I don't drink either within the 48 hours before that time. I can just wear my necklace."

Klaus studied her. "And you have to know that, wolfsbane or not, I'm keeping you locked up in the most secure place I can find every full moon."

"As long as it's not a circle of flame, I think I can handle that," she told him, and he actually laughed, the sound both startled and delighted.

"No flames, love, I promise," he told her, grinning. "Just bricks and bolts and a monster who's hunted you for a millennium."

He stepped back, perched up on the stairs, and held out his hand to her, palm facing upwards. They'd been here before, and she knew they were both caught between the present and the past. She could see dead bodies in her peripheral vision, could still hear his voice telling her, It's time.

She took his hand. "I like my chances," she said, feeling a real smile tingling behind her lips for the first time, here, play-acting with her would-be killer.

He grabbed her suitcase again, and led her up the stairs.

. . .

Klaus offered to hire (compel, more likely) someone to unpack Elena's stuff for her, and Elena was tempted to say yes (she once would have said no, just on principle, but now Elena had been a vampire, and more than that, she didn't really care anymore), except that she only had one suitcase, mostly just full of clothes, and that was hardly reason enough to bring in help.

Klaus sighed, and then lay the bag down on the bed, unzipping it and opening it. All of her clothes were neatly folded, and there were a couple of books, a folder of photos Elena might frame when she could bear to look at them, a makeup bag, her laptop, and not much else.

Klaus gave her a look. "You up and moved across the country and _this_ is all you packed?" he asked her.

Elena shrugged. "Remember that whole thing when I turned off my emotions and burned down my house?"

Klaus nodded. She could tell he was fighting a smile.

"I never exactly refurnished," she told him. "Jer and I just kind of moved into the boarding house, and then I lived in a college dorm. I wasn't exactly that attached to anything yet."

Klaus nodded, then frowned. "Didn't, er, 'that whole thing' happen because your brother was dead?"

"He came back," Elena said. It was her turn to frown. "I thought you'd been keeping tabs on Mystic Falls."

"Your brother was never particularly high on my priority list," said Klaus. "Especially not after that bargain of ours."

Elena had almost forgotten. _"The life of my sister in exchange for your brother? Yeah, I'd say that's a bargain."_ She wasn't sure how to reply, so she grabbed a pile of clothes out of the bag. Klaus moved to do the same.

"No," Elena said, firm as she could. Klaus shot her a questioning look. "You've already been way too decent to me today," she told him. "If you start helping me unpack then it will become genuinely creepy."

Klaus smiled at her. "Very well, love," he said. "I'll leave you to it, then." He moved toward the door, and then paused. "Be sure to come find me once you're done. We have a lot to discuss." Just like that, he was gone.

Elena inhaled, then exhaled, then looked around. The room looked nothing like her old bedroom or her dorm room, to her infinite relief. It was nice and spacious, with a big bed and a wooden desk and some empty bookshelves. She was also glad that it was only on the second floor; she was human again, and scaling staircases was no longer a thoughtless task.

She wasn't sure what she had expected. A tiny room at the highest part of the compound, like a princess in a tower, held captive by a wicked monster? Klaus may have been wicked and monstrous, but he wasn't holding her captive—at least not yet. Elena had told him she was willing to "stay here", but she hadn't specified for how long, and if she decided one day that she wanted to leave she wasn't so sure he would let her.

The thought should have bothered her more, but it didn't.

She knew what Klaus was, and she knew what she had gotten herself into. This wasn't Stefan and—her friends, stepping all over her free will to keep her safe without her consent. Klaus may have tried to take her against her will before, but this time she'd offered herself, proposed the agreement, and that made all the difference.

Klaus would do his best to keep her safe against every other supernatural faction who was after her—and Klaus's best was a hell of a lot better than anyone else's. Klaus would pester her to go to school, or get a job, or do something with her life, or to move on. It was pretty clear that Klaus wasn't going to set out to make her life miserable—but even if he had, she'd known Elijah was here too, that he wouldn't let Klaus torment her.

She was born because of Mikaelson family drama, after all. She was destined to never escape it. This, at least, was on her terms.

She finished packing up her stuff, but she didn't go downstairs yet, just sat in her desk chair and stared at a photo of her and Caroline—no Bonnie.

For the first time since she'd taken off in her car, she checked her phone.

Thirty-eight missed calls, countless texts from Caroline and Alaric and Jeremy and Matt and even Tyler. God, she'd only been gone for sixteen hours.

She didn't read any of the texts or listen to the messages. She just hit Caroline's number and waited.

Caroline picked up halfway through the first ring. "Elena!" she exclaimed. "Oh my _God_, Elena, where have you been? I've been searching all over for you, I've got people tearing Mystic Falls apart looking for you—"

"I'm fine, Care," said Elena, smiling so that her voice sounded warm, even though she didn't feel warm at all. "I'm sorry I worried you."

"Seriously, where are you? Do you need me to come pick you up? Please tell me you just went on a road trip to clear your mind, or something, please say you didn't do anything drastic."

"I went on a road trip, yeah," said Elena. She looked down at the picture of Caroline.

She'd called Caroline because Caroline was her best friend, yes, but she'd also called Caroline because Caroline had slept with Klaus, had always had a connection to Klaus, and was probably the only person who wouldn't rip open Elena's throat for what she had done.

"Well?" said Caroline. "Where are you?"

Elena took a deep breath. "I'm in New Orleans," she said, and braced herself for a reaction.

There was a minute-long pause. Elena didn't even hear Caroline breathe.

"What," said Caroline.

"I needed to get away," said Elena, desperately hoping Caroline would understand. "I couldn't—I couldn't be home anymore, and everywhere I go, _someone_ is bound to come looking for doppelganger blood, or to come kill me so that no one can get doppelganger blood—the only person who could even hope to keep me safe was Klaus."

"And Klaus is just, what, your new bodyguard?" asked Caroline. "You're not me, Elena—no offense—since when does Klaus care one way or another about protecting you?"

"Since I'm human again," said Elena.

Another silence, then: "Ahhhhh."

"Yeah." Elena shot a look at the door. Klaus could probably hear them both if he was trying, but what did it matter? Even if he was eavesdropping, she wasn't saying anything illicit.

"So we've come to an understanding," said Elena. "I've got my escape from Mystic Falls, and I'm not running or fighting for my life, or putting any of you guys in danger by just being around, and Klaus has willing access to my blood."

Caroline's breath hitched, and Elena knew she was hesitating about what to say. "But what about—now you just want an escape, but in a few months, a few years, what happens if you want to end the agreement? Elena, you're throwing away your _life_—"

"I'm pretty sure that if I decide I want to go back to school, Klaus will let me take classes at Tulane," said Elena, forcing herself to laugh. "He might compel some bodyguards in with me as well, or not let me go on the day full moon, or something. I'm not a damsel in the tower, Caroline, and I know what I got myself into."

She was expected another protest, but Caroline sighed. "At least you're safe," she said. "I guess I can't really blame you."

"You…can't?"

Caroline hummed. "I'm not sure I'm going back to Whitmore, either," she said. "I'm not sure I can deal, not without—I just don't know. I'll probably go back, but… I mean, I'm just glad you're not, I don't know, planning to kill yourself or something."

"My current plans are to drink a lot of bourbon and eat a lot of gumbo," Elena told her.

Caroline laughed. "Please, you're not Alaric. You'll be back to tequila in no time." She paused, and then, "Maybe I'll visit for spring break."

Elena laughed too, just a little. "I think you'd be welcome," she said. "Sorry for worrying you, Care. I promise I won't go quiet."

"You'd better not," Caroline told her.

Elena put down the phone, looked back down at the picture, and resolved to get it framed as soon as possible.

She knew Klaus wanted to talk, but she'd been in the car for fifteen hours. She took a shower in the ensuite bathroom, towel-dried her hair until it wasn't dripping, and pulled on a pale pink sundress. She wasn't exactly going to put on makeup for Klaus, but the bags under her eyes were downright embarrassing, and it was one thing for Klaus to know she was grieving and heartbroken, and another for him to see it. She put on a little concealer, yanked a brush through her damp hair, and headed towards the door.

She heard the doors to the compound open and froze, then heard Elijah's familiar tones, and relaxed.

"The Guerrera wolves—" Elijah was saying as Elena stepped on the top step of the stairs. He stopped short, and stared up at her outright, not bothering to disguise his shock at seeing her there. His eyes travelled from Elena, to Klaus, to Elena again, and the settled back on Klaus.

"Explain," he said, in a tight voice.

"Elijah," Elena said simply, running down the stairs, and then stopping when Klaus stepped forward. She knew this looked bad, but she couldn't tell which extreme Elijah was imagining: that Klaus had kidnapped Elena and locked her up, that Klaus and Elena had somehow started shacking up since he'd seen his brother (as if), or that Klaus had located some other doppelganger for reasons diabolical yet unknown.

"Ah, yes, brother," said Klaus. Elena couldn't see his face, but she could hear his grin. "It seems there has been a new development in the saga of—"

Elena rolled her eyes. "I drove down from Virginia," she said bluntly. Klaus shot her a look of betrayal for interrupting his dramatics, but Elena ignored him, making her way down the stairs and stepping up to Elijah.

Elijah's eyes were less harsh, but more perplexed. "Surely you didn't just drive down for a visit," he said. "Is something wrong in Mystic Falls? Have you come to ask for help?"

The answer to both questions was _yes_, of course, but not the way he was thinking.

Elena took a deep breath, but before she could speak, Klaus cut in.

"You're right, brother," he said, stepping forward and slinging his arm around Elena's shoulders. "She's not here for a visit. She's here for good."

Elena rolled her eyes again, and Klaus shot her a look.

"Your shoulders are far too bony," he told her. "You were already too thin to begin with. You can't start losing more weight, love, it'll mess with your blood sugar."

Elena glared sideways at Klaus, and Elijah inhaled, then said: "You're human."

Elena slipped out from under Klaus's arm, took another step towards Elijah. "It's a long story, but yes." Elijah looked at her as though to say, _I need more of an explanation than that_, and Elena sighed. "Short answer, I, um, died."

"You died," said Elijah, looking her up and down.

"Yeah," said Elena. "I mean, it happens to me a lot, let's be honest. First there was the time your brother killed me—"

"It wasn't personal," Klaus interjected.

Elena was growing very used to ignoring him. "Then I died and became a vampire, and most recently, I died—" she'd been all set to say it, but the words choked up in her throat, and she barely gritted out, "and, Other Side being weakened and all, I came back, but, you know, human."

Elijah narrowed his eyes at her. "How did you die the third time?"

Elena took a deep breath, paused, and then said, "Oh, well, I blew up the Grill to kill a group of Travellers. Not all, but a lot of them. I knew I was going to come back, though. It wasn't—wasn't a big deal, it had to be done."

"I see," said Elijah, and Elena braced herself for an onslaught of sarcasm. "Naturally, as soon as your humanity is returned to you, you immediately come and offer your blood supply to my brother. I'm sure none of your friends had anything to say about that, not, for example, a certain Salvatore brother—"

Klaus—thank _god_—didn't try to comfort her, or stop Elijah's words, or make any fake attempt at acting like they were friends, but she saw him still in her peripheral vision before she'd even registered the words herself. As soon as she did, she went rigid, stepping back a little bit.

"You're right, he didn't have anything to say," she spat out. "Because he's dead." It was Elijah's turn to still, and Elena forced her body to relax, forced herself to act like she wasn't falling apart. "Damon set off the explosion for me, but he didn't make it back, and then the Other Side disintegrated, so he and Bonnie are both dead for good." The words seemed to come out of her mouth as though her body and her brain were not attached. She refused to feel. "I came back, but I came back human, and I _had_ to leave Mystic Falls. I couldn't stay after what happened." She felt herself shrug, casual, unaffected. "The only thing more dangerous to be than a doppelganger is a human doppelganger, and despite everything that happened, I didn't want to be a dead doppelganger." She looked over at Klaus, and then back at Elijah. "It made sense."

She stood still, waiting for Elijah to react. When he stepped forward, and said "Elena", she held up a hand.

"If I wanted pity and coddling, I'd have moved back in with Caroline," she said. "So just don't."

Elijah nodded. "Very well," he said. "Then I suppose, despite the circumstances, it's good to see you again."

"Good to see who again?" came a female voice. Elena looked up at a balcony. Hayley was there, and then a second later she was standing on the ground floor next to them.

"Oh, good, we're all here, then," said Klaus. "Hayley, you remember Elena. She'll be living in the compound starting today. Also, she's human again."

"Why?" asked Hayley, crossing her arms, and Elena was pretty sure she was asking after the first statement, rather than the second.

"Everyone died," deadpanned Elena, sick by now of explaining herself. "I needed a fresh start."

Hayley shrugged. "Fair enough."

"Furthermore, the return of her humanity means Elena's blood can now make hybrids, giving us a way to both bring your pack back to our side, and to build our own army."

"You're not turning my pack members against their will," said Hayley, sounding almost bored, as though they'd had this argument before.

Klaus shrugged. "All right, we can turn Guerrera wolves, and either sire them to me or compel them to do what I say. I'm not particular."

"Maybe if you sire a Guerrera wolf, you can find that white oak stake of yours," said Hayley, stepping forward, arms still crossed.

Elena looked over at Klaus. "Your enemies have the white oak stake?"

"Don't get any ideas, love," said Klaus, walking back towards the staircase.

"We think they have the stake," said Elijah, stepping towards her, taking on the explaining voice she'd grown so accustomed to back when they were planning Klaus's death together. "We aren't certain. However, they have in their possessions rings, which allow them to drain Niklaus's power during the full moon and take it for themselves, all the while retaining their human form and mind, which makes the need to recover it all the more pressing."

"Well, how long would they have had it for?" she demanded.

"A few months," Elijah replied.

Elena laughed.

"What do you find so humorous about this?" growled Klaus, and Elena thanked her lucky stars that she had her humanity back and therefore a free pass for Klaus not to kill her.

"They don't have the stake," said Elena.

Elijah stepped toward her again. "How do you know this?"

Elena met his eyes, and then looked back at Klaus. "Do you remember when we had a bunch of white oak stakes, back when we were trying to kill you?"

"I'm not sure why you're reminding me of your many attempts on my life, but yes," said Klaus.

"We tried to kill you at literally every single opportunity," she said. "One stake, twelve stakes, back when we thought the dagger would kill Elijah personally, we were so high on the idea of having a super weapon that we never waited, and besides the weapon we never had any particular jump or advantage over you. If these werewolves have the stake, and you're extra vulnerable on the full moon, there's no way they wouldn't have attacked yet."

Everyone was quiet for a second, and it occurred to Elena that she'd been here for maybe three hours and she was already neck deep in Mikaelson family drama.

"She's right," said Elijah. "They would have attacked by now if they had the stake, or at least taunted us about it."

"So we could kill them now?" said Hayley. There was longing in her voice.

"We can kill them tonight," said Elijah.

. . .

It was pretty par for the course that Elena was already participating in a supernatural power play, having been in a new city for nine. hours.

To be fair, she didn't really have a part in the play. Whatever training she'd had from Alaric back when Stefan had turned off his humanity, she'd never learned to fight wolves. Klaus had been right about her losing weight, too; remembering to eat had been a struggle, since—she had definitely lost some weight, and was definitely not on the strong side for a human.

Besides, Klaus had told her in no uncertain terms that she was going to sit in her barricaded room until it was all over, and then proceeded to barricade her in her room, albeit with a number of weapons if the worst happened. When Stefan and—when her friends had done things like this, she'd been furious, but the whole point of this arrangement was for Klaus to keep her safe, and it wasn't although she was particularly invested in this whole War for the French Quarter.

They were victorious, of course. Klaus laughed and made broad proclamations about vanquishing all his enemies, and opened a bottle of champagne (Elena made sure not to comment on the blood staining his hands and spilling over his canvas). Hayley didn't want any part of it—Elena wasn't sure why, but she knew not to press her, knew what torment looked like and felt like and knew it wasn't her place to butt in—and Elijah tore after her with a murmur.

In the morning, Elena came downstairs to Elijah and Klaus burning those rings. Klaus was uncharacteristically morose, Elijah was, well, Elijah.

Elena overheard something suggesting Klaus's child wasn't dead—confirming her suspicions—but she trusted Klaus to keep his word. She'd know the truth soon enough.

She found her way to the kitchen. The fridge was surprisingly stocked—she couldn't imagine Klaus and Elijah grocery shopping, so maybe they just had a standing order, and hadn't ever canceled it, not even when Hayley turned. It didn't matter. She put some coffee on, started to cook. She'd never really cooked as a vampire, and she'd forgotten how satisfying the crack of the eggs and sizzle of the toast was.

"You're cooking," came Klaus's voice from the doorway. Elena didn't look over at him—she didn't want to burn anything—but she made a humming sound in response. "French toast?" he asked.

"You told me I needed to put on weight," she said, and then, flipping the bread onto her plate, looked up at him. "I can be agreeable, you know."

"I wouldn't know, actually," he said, smiling.

Elena dropped another slice of bread into the pan. "Do you want any?" she asked. "I cracked some extra eggs, just in case."

"Why not?" Klaus opened the cabinet next to her, took out two mugs, poured the coffee, and brought it over to the table. A couple of minutes later, Elena brought over the plates.

"Why are you smiling at me like that?" she asked him.

Klaus just grinned. "I'm enjoying the moment," he told her. "It's not every day the doppelganger you once sacrificed cooks you breakfast."

"It's not every day the hybrid who sacrificed you asks if you take cream or sugar," Elena retorted, taking a seat. She drowned her toast in a fattening amount of maple syrup, then met Klaus' eyes. "And you're welcome."


	3. my heart keeps beating like a hammer

Despite having been in the compound for a few days, Elena still hadn't seen much of Elijah beyond that first day. So when he burst into her room with a bottle of scotch and two glasses, she just raised an eyebrow, not entirely sure what to think.

"Morning to you too," she said. She glanced down at the bottle, and then met his eyes again. "Let me guess," she said, closing her book. "Your brother's driven you to day-drinking."

He offered her a wry smile that did not meet his eyes. "Can't I just be here to catch up over a drink?"

"It's eleven in the morning," she rejoined, standing up. "If you just wanted to catch up over a drink, that drink would be coffee." She grabbed the bottle out of his hand. "Lucky for you, though, I have recently discovered the merits of day-drinking, so I will take you up on your offer." She twisted open the bottle.

Elijah took it from her, poured the drinks into the glasses he held between his fingers with vampire balance and precision, and handed her the glass. She accepted it gratefully, then sunk into one of the large cushioned chairs. Elijah did the same.

"So," said Elena. Other than the brief encounters they'd had over the week, Elena hadn't really seen Elijah since her humanity had been off, the time she'd pretended to be Katherine and kissed him. "Are you actually here to catch up, or are you here to rant about Klaus?"

Elijah's lips quirked upwards. "I'm not here to complain about my brother, Elena."

"Oh, good," she said. "Once you've heard one of your Klaus-rants, you've kinda heard them all."

Elijah took a sip, ignoring her statement. "How are you, Elena?" he asked. "How have you been? I haven't seen you since—"

"I had my humanity turned off and pretended to be your girlfriend, who had killed my brother?" Elijah gave a small nod, and Elena took a drink. "Well, things got a little better, then way worse, as they tend to do. Jeremy came back to life, though, so that's all good."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Elijah. "And I know you do not want my pity, but you have my deepest condolences over your recent loss."

"Losses," Elena said, before she could help herself. She was heartbroken over—but she was equally destroyed over both of their deaths, and she couldn't let one of them take precedence over the other. "Bonnie, too."

"Ah, yes, Miss Bennett." He swirled the contents of his glass. "I'm very sorry."

Elena couldn't tell him it was fine, couldn't really bear to even thank him, so she just nodded. "Anyway," she said, and then took a long gulp while thinking of something to say, "it's always drama back home, so you missed lots, but nothing really all that relevant." She paused, looking for something interesting to say. "I met the original doppelganger."

Elijah froze. "Tatia?" he said, barely even a whisper.

"Nope," said Elena, with a small smile. "Apparently she wasn't the first. There was already a doppelganger curse in place a thousand years before Tatia, we just didn't have the whole sacrifice, hybrid-making blood situation in play." Elena met his gaze. "Silas's girlfriend," she said. "Her name was Amara. She had the same immortality thing as Silas, but she took the cure and found peace with him, I think."

Elijah didn't say anything, but his eyes were looked at her, rapt. It occurred to Elena that, even though she generally thought of her doppelganger heritage as mainly affecting her and Klaus (not Stefan, not really, they might have both been doppelgangers but he and his own were never bound together they way hers were), but of course Elijah had loved Tatia too, had loved Katherine, could maybe have loved her, had life worked out a little differently. Her legacy ran just as deeply in his veins.

"She was a traveller," said Elena, trying to sound like she was telling a story, rather than throwing around incoherent facts about her genetic identical. "Or, well, she was a handmaiden among the travellers, Quetsiyah's handmaiden, to be precise. Quetsiyah used her to create the other side, made her the original anchor." She offered Elijah a wry grin. "Apparently my DNA's really good for enacting millennium-long supernatural curses."

"Travellers," said Elijah, as though weighing the word.

"Yeah," said Elena. "They're—"

"I have, in fact, encountered Travellers before," said Elijah. "Of course, I had no idea that they were in any way tied to our… history."

"Yeah, it's kinda weird," said Elena. "I dunno, though. Turns out Katherine's father was a traveller, too, so when she turned human again she was able to learn the skill." Elena frowned, had some of her drink. "I guess that makes sense, we're all one bloodline." She drank more. "You know, I never thought about this, being a vampire, but I've probably got that gene too, come to think of it."

"Do you want to develop it?" asked Elijah, sounding very careful.

Elena laughed. "Oh, God, no," she said. "I wouldn't—I would never want to possess someone else's body." She didn't speak for a moment, then came to a decision. "Right before Katherine died, she jumped into my body."

"What?" asked Elijah.

Elena took a deep breath, and stared intently at her glass. "Yeah," she said, voice quiet. "The only way she could survive was to body jump, and, well, why jump into some stranger's body when she could just get her vampire body back?" She bit her lip. "It was a few months before the others realized, and we finally got her out."

"Elena, that's terrible," said Elijah, leaning forward a little.

Elena held out her glass for a refill. "Yeah, it sucked, but, hey, I got my body back eventually. I was mad about it for a while, but no point sulking about it."

"I suppose you have a point," said Elijah, pouring scotch into both of their empty glasses. "After all, if you chose to sulk over your losses the way, say, my brother does, you'd hardly be able to do anything at all."

Elena forced herself to smile. "Thank you for acknowledging my superior coping methods," she said. "But I don't really think your praise is applicable anymore."

Elijah studied her. Finally, he said: "If Niklaus were in your place, everyone around him would be long dead. I think you're doing just fine."

. . .

"Wear something nice," said Klaus, barging into her room without knocking. Elena looked up from her book, but stayed in her chair. The bottle of scotch stood, half-empty, on the floor.

"Where are we going?" she asked, then bit her lip. "Or are you hosting someone?"

Klaus sat in the chair across from her, where Elijah had been stationed earlier. "I," he said, with a grin, "am planning to pay a visit to a certain upstart little witch."

"The one making the moonlight rings," said Elena. "Sure, okay." She paused, shifted in her seat. "Why are you bringing me?"

"Well, sweetheart," said Klaus, pulling his chair forward to grab the bottle of scotch, "Hayley is on her own mission tonight, strengthening ties with the Crescent wolf pack, and dear Elijah is off running god knows what errands on the other side of the river. And," he said, pouring himself Elijah's glass, "since both of those missions could turn very ugly, very fast, while my meeting is taking place under a white flag, I'm on babysitting duty tonight."

Elena watched him fill up her glass, and accepted it when he handed it over. "Don't trust me alone in the compound?" she asked, even though she wasn't really offended.

Klaus winked at her. "Don't trust the compound alone with you, love," he said.

Elena took a long drink from her glass. "So," she said, after a minute, "I guess you're here to brief me."

"Glad we're on the same page," Klaus told her, with a grin. He swirled around the contents of his glass. "The witch in question is a teenage girl, one of the Harvest sacrifices—"

"Harvest?" asked Elena. "Wait, a sacrifice?"

"Not feeling so special anymore?" Klaus teased. "It's a tradition of the French Quarter witches, sacrifice four young chosen ones, let their power flow into the earth and back into the coven, and then, ancestors willing, resurrect the girls to be hailed as martyrs." He took a sip. "'Course, it doesn't always work out so well when you fail to tell the sacrifices you'll be killing them until they see one of their sisters have their throat sliced open, but, all's well that ends well."

"Hang on," said Elena. There was a buzzing in her ears, in her mind, something that wasn't to do with the alcohol at all. "They didn't _know _they were going to be sacrificed?"

"Makes you grateful for my merciful ways, doesn't it?" asked Klaus, with a smirk.

"Yeah, actually," said Elena. Klaus raised an eyebrow. "I willingly agreed to die," she said, measuring the words, not sure how to put this sudden flare of horror into words. "And sure, I knew I was probably going to come back to life, or come back as a vampire, whichever one of my friends' plans worked, but—I knew what I was doing. And if I'd died for real, it would have been my choice."

Klaus's lips flattened into a line. "You can't think I would have given you a choice had you refused me."

"I had a choice," Elena shot back at him, gripping her glass too tight. "I could have pulled a Katherine, run as fast and as far as I could and let you hunt down everyone I loved, or I could surrender. I may not have had great options, but I had a choice. And I knew what my choice was." She realized her hand was trembling, and she willed it to still. "I already could barely cope with the surprises I did get that night," she told him, refusing to voice Jenna's name, "but if I hadn't known what was in store for me… How could anyone do that to someone? Especially to a child?"

"The Harvest girls were only a couple of years younger than you were, sweetheart," said Klaus. "You're walking on very judgmental grounds, here."

"I was almost an adult," Elena countered. "I'd lived, I'd loved, I'd lost. Seventeen-nearly eighteen-years wouldn't have been a long life, but it would have been a life." She swallowed. "I just can't imagine."

"Actually," said Klaus, "one of the girls knew what was coming."

Elena raised her eyebrows. "Yes?"

"Well," said Klaus, "that's a bit unfair. She didn't know she was supposed to die until her first friend's throat had been slit, but the sacrifice was cut short, and she was rescued. Eight months later, she willingly sacrificed herself, because the power she'd inherited from the ritual was going to kill her anyway, and take down everyone else in this city."

Elena swallowed. "Did she come back?"

"Oh, yes, they're all back now," Klaus told her. "Two of them are dead again, but that was due to their attempt on my child's life, not because of any witchy ritual troubles." He knocked back his glass, draining it down in one gulp.

"Tonight's plan," said Klaus, "is simply to figure out what is motivating the little witch, and make it very clear to her and to all of her werewolf allies that opposing me is a very, very bad idea."

"What do you want me to do?" asked Elena.

Klaus grinned. "It'll depend on how the night goes," he told her. "I could decide to reveal what your blood means for my power. If things grow truly desperate I might need to create some hybrids on the spot, though I promise I won't let anyone bite into that pretty little neck of yours." He grinned. "You don't mind a little cut on your palm, do you, love?"

Elena hesitated, and then shrugged, sighing. "Not really," she said.

"Fantastic," said Klaus, and it occurred to Elena that, for all his posturing, he wouldn't have forced her to let new hybrids feed on her. "Hopefully it won't come to that. I might just wax poetic about your doppelganger heritage." He grinned. "I want you to be beautiful, love, not that that'll be any trouble, and I want you to present a completely united front with me, no attitude or bickering." He reached out, stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.

"Your face has walked this earth since biblical times, sweetheart," he said, with a grin. "I want you to show them what that means."

. . .

The dress she'd chosen was long and strapless, with wisps of black silk fluttering down to her mid-calves, and she paired it with tall black heels, elegant and thin. She pinned her hair to one side, deliberately showcasing the puncture wounds from the sacrifice, all those years ago; it had faded in her vampirism, but returned with her humanity, like a symbol to the world that the doppelganger had been sacrificed, and that the curse had been lifted. She usually covered it thoroughly with makeup, but tonight she left it fully exposed.

Klaus wanted a show of power to this, the coven of witches his mother had under her control? What better way to do that then demonstrate for all the world to see that the worst she had ever done to Klaus had been undone, that the curse that had haunted him for a millennium had been broken, and that all that she'd sought to keep from her son was now resting in the palm of his hands?

She hadn't expected herself to be this engrossed in the tasks, in the show and the power dynamics and the symbolism of it all, but something about having agency over her own legacy, for the first time she could remember, gave her a rush like nothing else. She knew Klaus would be surprised and impressed, and more than anything else, she wanted to prove that she knew exactly what she'd signed up for, and that she was ready to embrace it.

She walked down the stairs with the grace she'd learned from Miss Mystic Falls, all elegance and loveliness, and met Klaus's eyes when she reached the last step.

He was smiling at her, a smile that was desperately trying to be a smirk but couldn't suppress sincere delight. He wore a leather jacket and a white T-shirt, but that didn't bother her. She knew he wasn't dressing up for this, just as she knew she wasn't there as a player or as a negotiator, but as a symbol of power.

"I admit, love, you've outdone my expectations," he told her, offering his arm.

She took it. "I've been doing that forever," she remarked, and he laughed. "I'm letting you know straight away, though, these shoes are entirely for effect and not at all for convenience, so you had better let me hold onto you the entire way there, or we'll both be in for embarrassment."

He laughed again, and suddenly she felt all her weight lift, so that when she stepped, she was fairly certain she was walking on air and air alone.

He grinned. "Don't tell me you've forgotten the wonders of vampire strength," he said, and led her out into the world.

She hadn't actually left the compound since her arrival, hadn't even been tempting, but now she realized what she was missing out on. New Orleans in the day was unbelievable, but New Orleans by night was something else. He led her though stunning streets, past music and art and bars thrumming with the thrill of eternity, pointing out this or that location along the way. She couldn't help but wish she'd been kinder to Caroline about… whatever was going on between the two of them. She wasn't attracted to him, wasn't sure she could ever be attracted to anyone again, but she could see what Caroline must have seen, and she could understand why he appealed to her.

They came to a graveyard. Elena almost cracked a joke about returning to her days as emo graveyard girl, but they were probably within hearing of the witches and definitely within hearing of the wolves, and even though she'd chosen to dress to put on a show, all Klaus had really asked of her was for her to take this seriously. She could do that.

They entered the graveyard, quiet and mist and not much else. "Well?" Klaus called out, and she let go of his arm so he could stroll out into the emptiness. "Does no one greet their guests anymore?"

Werewolves, more werewolves than Elena had ever seen in one place, all leapt out at once, growling despite their human form. Klaus continued to speak, but Elena tuned him out, simply focused on keeping her heart rate calm, on appearing as unaffected as possible. She remembered imitating Katherine, and twisted her lips into a slight smirk, meeting the eyes of some of the wolves. They didn't retreat, but they seemed unsettled, as though they did not know who she was but knew it meant something that she was here at Klaus's side.

"Well?" called out Klaus, and Elena lifted her chin. "Where is she? Where is this witch, who dares craft moonlight rings without my permission?"

Elena waited for a second, and then heard a high voice ring out, "Niklaus." The werewolves parted like the red sea, and Elena saw, walking through—

Elena grabbed Klaus's wrist faster than she'd ever moved as a human, squeezing so tightly she would have broken a human bone.

Elena had fallen into the habit of attributing her instincts to experience, to three years of being hunted and chased (not to one thousand years, no matter what the mirror told her), but this, this was a doppelganger thing, there was no way around it. This was flames in her head and ice down her back, a blade slicing open her skin and draining every last drop of her blood, cold, clammy air, the full moon fading and fading until everything was dark, this was a curse woven into her blood and bones and legacy, written on her body before this body had ever been conceived, this was a screamed warning, a thousand blaring alarms, that even Klaus had never triggered before. This was the first fear. For what could have been seconds or years or a millennium, her heart was beating _Tatia/Katerina/Elena/Tatia/Katerina/Elena/Tatia/Katerina/Elena_ and she was all of them and none of them, she did not know who she was, only knew the woman in front of her, beyond body or memory or magic.

"Esther," she whispered. Klaus's head snapped towards her, eyes widening in alarm, so wide it was almost comical, except that nothing could be comical, not now. She had known this fear before; the first time she'd seen Esther, standing on a grand staircase, flanked by all her children. That fear had driven her to accepting Esther's invitation, to hurting Damon—oh god, Damon—in her desperation to seek Esther out, to going along with Esther's plan, to betraying Elijah, She hadn't been able to explain it to anyone, why she'd acted the way she had, because she didn't know how to put into words how this woman inspired in her paralyzing, all-consuming terror like no one else.

"Well, well, well," said Klaus, and warm relief flooded Elena at the realization that Klaus wasn't going to question her instinct. "How about that?" He stepped forward, sliding his hand so that it was in hers. It occurred to her that, out of everyone standing in the graveyard, Klaus was the only one who could hear the machine gun battery of her heart against her ribcage, knew, whether he understood why or not, that she was afraid beyond belief. She wasn't sure if the hand was to comfort her, to remind her that he was with her, or to keep her steady on her feet and maintain his show of power. Either way, she was glad of it.

"Well, mother," he said, "I'd say I've missed you, but truth be told, I haven't at all."

. . .

By the time they returned to the compound, Elena was shaking so fiercely she could not even maintain the image of walking straight. Klaus, with a sigh that was frustrated, but not quite cruel, swept his arm up under her feet, carrying her half of the way there. She did not object, nor thank him; she was hardly aware of where she was. The world flashed between reality and the other girl's world, Tatia's world, the night Esther had killed her, and every time she blinked all she saw was firefirefire, and every time she shifted, she could feel her the shadow of her skin ripping open. She'd held it together at the graveyard, hardly noticing anything that happened, all of her willpower forcing her to stay still and distant, disassociating from the world like she'd never done before, but now tremors shook her body, and once she'd started to let the demons in, she could not close the floodgates.

Klaus set her down on the couch and grabbed her hands in his, but she still could not move, could not even look him in the eye. He swore, and strode out of the room.

"Niklaus—" came Elijah's voice, and there was a crash.

"Not now, Elijah!" Klaus roared, striding back into the room, a bottle in his hand. He poured the liquid—scotch or bourbon or whisky, she was not present enough to look or smell carefully enough to tell—into a glass, and Elijah entered the doorway, coming to a stop when he saw Elena. Wordlessly, he took the glass.

Elijah tried to put it in her hands, but she was still shaking so fiercely that he had to place it down on the coffee table instead.

"I must admit, love," said Klaus, his back to her as he stared out of a window, "I'm rather perplexed that seeing my mother has you so rattled." He sounded, of all things, petulant. "For heaven's sake, I've killed you before, and you've never seemed this frightened of—"

"Elijah, I'm sorry," Elena blurted out, clasping the glass between her hands but not risking picking it up.

Klaus spun around to stare at her, confusion clear on his face. Elijah, less demonstrative as always, furrowed his brow.

"What for?" he asked, tone careful.

"That time I betrayed you," she said, the words spilling out beyond her control, "the night of the ball, when Esther had just come back, the first time."

Elijah's gaze turned wary. "Elena," he said, then looked away, and then looked back. "I do believe we've been over this, and that I've already expressed to you that the way I reacted was equally—"

Elena had started shaking her head before he was finished talking. "You don't understand," she said, "I couldn't, I couldn't figure out how to explain it, I'm sorry."

Elijah sat down across from her. "Explain what?"

Ever since Elena had arrived in New Orleans, it had been her own personal law not to be emotional, not to be weepy, sad Elena again, not in front of anyone, _especially _not in front of Klaus.

She knocked back the glass, draining it in one gulp.

"My first memory," Elena said, trying to keep her voice even. "It's not something from being a kid, or being a baby. It's being Tatia, the night Esther cursed you, but not knowing I'm Tatia, just fear and darkness and her cold knife slicing open my skin—"

Klaus was at her side in under a second. "You remember being Tatia?" he asked.

Elena scowled at him, and for some reason that, more than anything, calmed her down. "I've never been Tatia," she said. "Or Katherine. I don't remember either of their lives, just that one night, and for most of my life I thought it was just a really vivid dream I'd had. It's only—it's a doppelganger thing, it's why I recognized her tonight, why—"

"Why you went along with her plan that night," said Elijah. "Your fear of my mother predates your very existence, it's no wonder the first time you met her you couldn't dare defy her." He inhaled. "It makes perfect sense, I should have seen it earlier myself."

Klaus was still staring at her as though she were a ghost. "You don't remember anything else?" he asked.

"I'm not Tatia!" Elena exclaimed. "I never have been! It's not my memory, it's hers, it's just—I don't know, passed down to me like an inheritance, like a warning."

"A warning?" Klaus echoed.

"Yeah," said Elena, "like, 'don't give Esther a reason to kill us again. Just do what she says, and then run the hell away'."

"Us?" repeated Klaus.

"Brother, that's enough," said Elijah, standing up, and placing a hand on Klaus's shoulder. "None of us truly understand the significance of Elena's doppelganger heritage, least of all Elena herself, who has only known of it for three years, rather than our millennium."

Klaus sighed, sinking into the couch next to Elena. He looked at her. "You're still trembling," he commented, and grabbed her wrist. He frowned. "You're cold, too. I should fetch you a blanket."

"Before you do, brother," said Elijah, clasping his hands behind his back, "I have some rather devastating news as well."

Klaus snarled at him. "What could be worse than the return of our mother?"

"Our father," said Elijah, looking beyond stricken.

Klaus's grip on her wrist tightened dangerously then went completely slack. Elena didn't think she'd have noticed if he'd broken it clean through.

"Mikael?" she whispered.

Klaus turned to her, eyes wide and desperate. "How?"

"He must have come back when the Other Side was weakened," she said, furiously blocking her mind from reliving the night of her own returned. "He—he would have needed a witch, though."

"He has one," Elijah cut in. "Davina has him locked away somewhere, enslaved by an…enchanted bracelet."

"That little witch," growled Klaus, rising to his feet, "I swear I'll—"

"He has the white oak stake," said Elijah, and Klaus went silent.

Elena's ears were ringing. "Hang on," she said, using the words to tether her to the world amidst her dizziness. "Davina has him?" At Elijah's nod, Elena closed her eyes, forcing her way through her shaking. "She… she was a sacrifice girl, wasn't she?"

"She was a Harvest girl," said Elijah, "yes."

"She was a sacrifice girl," repeated Elena, her voice barely more than a murmur. "I need to talk to her."

Klaus turned to her. "And how, sweetheart, are you going to reason with a young witch you've never met?"

Elena forced herself to meet his eyes. "I'm a sacrifice girl too."

Klaus scowled. "So what, you'll bond with her over your years-ago trauma?"

"You didn't see me again until months after that night," Elena snapped back at him. "I was a wreck. And sure, I was grieving, but that was separate. For months, I was… I was a walking ball of trauma." Her voice grew stronger by the word. "I couldn't _look _at fire, I woke up screaming every night, and even just—hearing something someone said could send me back to that night and trigger a full-blown panic attack."

She didn't really know why she was telling all of this to Klaus, Klaus who killed her that night, but all she can think about is a terrified teenage witch with no reprieve, no friends or family to lean on, so desperate for control she had brought back a monster who would kill her given the first chance.

"You think you can commiserate with Davina over shared trauma," said Elijah.

"I think Davina feels completely alone," said Elena, rising to her feet. "She agreed to be sacrificed, just like I did. She knows what it's like to have to fight your every instinct screaming at you to run, to make yourself vulnerable despite wanting to do anything but." She took a deep breath. "Once you've been that weak, nothing scares you as much as the possibility of being weak again. The other Harvest girls wouldn't understand, but I do."

"And so you'd befriend Davina, all for our sake?" said Klaus.

"For her sake," Elena corrected him. "And yeah. I guess I don't really want Mikael to kill either of you."

"A touching sentiment," drawled Klaus. "Truly, I'm moved."

"Go to hell," retorted Elena, and Klaus offered a weak laugh. She met Elijah's eyes again. "Trust me, Elijah," she said, taking a step forward. "This girl is frightened, and isolated, and doesn't think she has another choice." She swallowed, and lifted her chin. "You of all people know that I know what that's like."

Elijah stared at her for a long moment, but Elena did not blink. "I do," he said, finally, taking a step back. "Trust you, that is."

Elena smiled, small but victorious. "I know what I'm talking about, Elijah," she said, and felt her smile grow bigger, not entirely under her control. "You'll see."


	4. you see i have lost many things

Elena should not have been surprised when Esther issued her dinner invitation on a silver platter with a flock of ravens. She really, really shouldn't have. But despite this, when the birds flew out of freaking nowhere she flinched and ducked.

Despite the severity of his mother's return from the dead, Klaus spared a moment to laugh at her.

"Really, love," he said, smirking, though she could tell his heart wasn't really in it. "Scared of a few birds?"

She rolled her eyes and didn't deign to response. For a second, something was forming on her tongue, a comeback about vampires and crows, but then Damon swam into her mind and she swallowed it down like a ball of lead in her throat.

"Between both of your parents, I can see where you get your flair for the dramatic," Elena said instead.

Klaus scowled at her. "I did not inherit anything from Mikael," he growled, striding toward her. "If you'd forgotten, he did not sire me—"

"Really? You're going to lecture me about not being raised by your biological parents?" she asked, taking a step forward. "I wasn't raised by my biological parents either. Jeremy isn't even my brother; he's technically my cousin. All of which you know, since, I don't know, you made my biological mother kill herself in front of me, not to mention that the only reason I survived your sacrifice was that John traded his life for mine." He seemed shell-shocked, so she gave him a tiny shove, just to emphasize her point. "You don't have to think of Mikael as your father, or call him your father, if you don't want to, but don't act like just because someone's not your birth parent doesn't mean they're automatically not your parent."

It occurred to her that she probably needed to work through some stuff, that she shouldn't take Klaus's family drama to heart so much, that maybe she hadn't totally come to terms with her adoptive father the vampire torturer or her birth mother the traitorous murderer, but Klaus's face still seemed blank with shock.

When he finally spoke, it wasn't what she was expecting. "That's how you survived?"

"What?" asked Elena. She took a step back.

"John Gilbert traded his life for yours?" Klaus seemed to be somewhere else, processing the matter. "You really did die?"

Elena frowned. "Well, yeah. Duh. I mean, you broke your curse."

Klaus furrowed his brow. "I thought you used the elixir Elijah had once found for Katerina."

Elena met Elijah's eyes over the table. "I intended to," she admitted. "But then Damon fed me vampire blood, and the elixir became obsolete."

Klaus blinked. "You knew you were going to survive either way?" he asked. "That's why you agreed?"

"No," said Elena, feeling impatient and a little confused, and also a little relieved, that they were having this conversation so many years after he'd killed her. "I hadn't expected to survive, not when I tried to track you down and surrender, not when I made a deal with Elijah, not when I undaggered Elijah for his help. I was prepared to die. I found out about the elixir… just a couple of days before, and I only half expected it to work. Damon fed me his blood the morning of the sacrifice, and I expected to turn into a vampire, or for Bonnie to find a way to undo the vampire blood and I would just flat-out die. I was shocked when I woke up human."

Klaus seemed to be registering this. She could almost see the gears spinning, whirling in his head, like he was running laps around this new information but couldn't quite grasp it.

"How did you not know this years ago?" she asked. "This isn't a recent update."

"I assumed that I already knew," Klaus replied. He still seemed disoriented, but like he was getting his bearings again, little by little.

"As fascinating as the many crimes you've committed against each others' families are, I think we have something more important to discuss," said Hayley. "Such as: what the hell does your mother want?"

"I suppose we'll have to find out from her," said Elijah, shooting a glance over at Klaus. "Brother, I trust you know that we must attend this soirée?"

Klaus rolled his eyes. "Loath as I am to admit it, you're right." He looked at Elena, gaze still a little weary. "We'll have to find some way to keep you safe—"

"No," said Elena, struck with inspiration. "No. We'll have to find Davina today, so I can talk to her tonight when all the other powers are busy."

"With no protection?" Klaus snarled. "Have you forgotten that she has our father along with her?"

"Have you forgotten that the last time I saw your father I was his ally?" she shot back. "Out of everyone in the city, I am the person he is the least likely to kill on sight. With the possible exception of your mother, though for all I know that would be more due to shock."

"I think that's a solid plan," said Hayley, to Elena's surprise. She turned to Klaus. "We have to deal with the Davina situation one way or another, and I for one would much rather Elena talk her around than you end up hurting the poor girl."

Klaus sighed dramatically, but Elena knew it was decided. She looked over at Hayley, stoic as ever, and wondered if Hayley felt as protective of Davina as Elena did; if that was what happened, when someone hurt you when you were far too young to be hurt like that, if Hayley could see herself in scared young girls the way Elena could.

She'd thought badly of Hayley for a long time without really knowing her; she hadn't thought anything of Hayley before she'd betrayed them, and afterwards she'd thought of her rarely, but only ever with spite. She felt regret on the tip of her tongue; Elena had done awful, terrible things too. She was the last person who could judge.

. . .

Elena felt naked as she walked through the woods. Sure, she'd spent plenty of time in the dark forests of Mystic Falls, but she'd forgotten what it was like to do so without being a vampire, or without a vampire at her side. She was starting to feel fear creeping into her veins when she heard, high and clear, the voice of a girl.

A second later, Mikael had her pinned to a tree.

"Mikael," she gasped, more for show than out of shock. "I'd—I'd heard, but I wasn't sure I believed it."

Mikael snarled in her face but, thank god, did not attack. "Which one are you?" he asked.

Elena hadn't expected that. "Mikael, it's—it's me," she said, because that was probably what she would have said last time he'd seen her. "It's Elena. Katherine died months ago."

Mikael did not move. "And why should I believe you?"

"Look, I'm human," she said, reaching behind her body to scrape her thumb against the tree, hard, and then held it up to him. She carefully ignored the fact that Katherine had been human again too. "Besides, if I were Katherine, why would I come to you?"

Mikael sniffed at her blood, then let her go, and Elena tried to keep the sputtering and gasping for breath to a minimum. Behind Mikael, a girl stepped forward. She was startlingly pretty, long brown hair and wide eyes, a few years younger than Elena and tinier than Elena had been at her age. Elena's heart went out to the girl immediately.

"Who is she?" asked the girl.

"You must be Davina," said Elena, her smile coming more naturally than it should have considering her recent near-asphyxiation. She stepped forward, just a tiny bit, not enough to threaten but enough to seem approachable. "Hi. I'm—"

"Klaus's latest doppelganger," cut in Mikael.

Elena scowled at him. "I'm not his. Not ever." She swallowed, and met Mikael's eyes. "If I'm anyone's, I'm Tatia's—or Amara's—or even Katherine's. Klaus doesn't own any part of me."

"Then why are you in this city?" demanded Mikael.

"Oh, I don't know," said Elena. She had never had quite the gift for sarcasm some people did, but she summoned up her inner Katherine, her inner Hayley, her inner Dam—Damon. "It's not like Klaus is at war and my blood is the only way to create hybrids. It's not like he's ever taken my blood by force before. It's not like he can compel people." She didn't have to try very hard to bring all of her anger boiling, bursting to the top, and dripping hot poison onto her tongue. "Clearly, I'm just voluntarily playing house with the guy who murdered my family and sacrificed me."

There was the soft sound of leaves crunching and twigs cracking. It snapped Elena out of her staring contest with Mikael, over to wear Davina was standing, arms crossed, the stance more defensive than she was probably going for. "You were sacrificed?" Davina asked after a moment. Her voice was quiet, wavering, fragile, like the sound of a child learning the flute, making a weak sound that might vanish at any second.

Elena forced herself to push all thoughts of Mikael from her mind, to give her entire attention to the girl. She took a breath.

"You know how Klaus is a hybrid?" she asked. She waited for Davina's nod before continuing. "Back when Klaus activated his werewolf gene—I mean," she shot a look at Mikael, "you obviously know what happened better than I do, but basically the Original Witch, Klaus's mother, put a curse on him to suppress that side of him, making him all vampire. She drew the power for that curse from the death of a girl named Tatia, my distant ancestor from, I don't know, a thousand years back." She took a deep breath. "The only way to break that curse was a ritual, that involved the sacrifice of one of Tatia's doppelgangers."

"So he sacrificed you?" asked Davina. Elena felt just a little stupid. Of course the girl's main interest wasn't the semantics of Elena's ritual; it was that Elena was like her, that Elena might understand her. Elena had known that, had sought her out for that purpose, and here she was pulling a total Elijah on the poor girl.

"He did," she confirmed, and then bitterness rose in her like an old friend, a wave so intense she could not keep it from spilling out even if she had tried to. "He didn't just sacrifice me, though. He possessed the body of someone I cared about, tried to kill my best friend so she couldn't use magic to stop the ritual, taunted me for weeks, came to my school dance, compelled girls to tell me he wanted me to save him a dance, dedicated songs for me in shout-outs. His ritual needed him to kill a vampire and a werewolf, so he kidnapped two of my best friends, and when they escaped—when we rescued them—he turned my aunt into a vampire and killed her. He did all of that even though I'd already agreed to the sacrifice, so that I could save the people I loved. He didn't care." She swallowed, felt a familiar burning in the back of her eyes. "The ritual required him to drain my blood to the point of my death. The only reason I survived was that my birth father traded his life for mine in some dark spell."

Davina's lips were trembling, her eyes wide. "But why…why does he need you now?"

Elena scoffed. "Turns out the Original Witch screwed me over twofold. The only way for Klaus to make hybrids is through using my blood." She offered Davina a wry smile. "We found that out during a fun little episode wherein he, oh, compelled by boyfriend to kill two of my classmates and then feed on me, and meanwhile, forced by werewolf friend into transition into a hybrid and fed him my blood experimentally. If his hunch hadn't been right, we all probably would have died that night."

"Oh my god," said Davina, looking less afraid and more angry. "That's horrible."

"About a month later, we found Mikael, allied with him against Klaus" Elena continued. "He can—and will—attest to everything I'm saying by the way." She turned towards him. "I'm sorry Stefan betrayed you that night," she said. "But you did stab Katherine thinking she was me, so I guess we're even."

Davina stared at her, wide-eyed, for another moment, then seemed to come to a resolution. She stepped forward. "I hate Klaus too," she said. "He's hurt me, killed people I love, held me prisoner." She paused. "I brought Mikael back to kill Klaus," she said in a low voice, as though sharing a secret. "You could join us."

Elena started shaking her head before Davina was finished speaking. "You can't," she said. "When you kill an Original, you kill every vampire in their bloodline. I've helped kill two originals, trust me, I know. My best friend comes from Klaus's bloodline." She took a deep breath. "As much as I hate him, there's nothing I can do. I can't lose anyone else."

She was expecting Davina to look shocked at the revelation, but instead her eyes were glimmering. "I know," she said. "There are people I love in his line, too. That's why I haven't let Mikael kill him yet." She shot Mikael a glare so fierce that Elena felt both proud and taken aback. "I'm working on a spell, to unlink his descendants," she continued. "Once I complete it, I can kill him and no one else will be at risk."

Mikael audibly growled, and Elena shot him a startled look, and then looked back at Davina.

"You can do that?" she asked, her surprise not feigned at all. Davina nodded, now fully smiling, stepping toward Elena again.

"Yeah, I can," she said. "I know that I can. And I can protect you from his brother, too—"

As much as Elena wanted Davina to trust her, she couldn't keep the pretense this far. "Elijah would never try to hurt me," she said. "He's been in love with two other girls who shared my face, at one point I think he was—or thought himself in love with me, too. You don't have to worry about that."

Davina nodded.

"And I can't help with anything," said Elena. "I'm sorry, but I'm completely—well, I'm a supernatural occurrence, but I don't have any abilities. I'd be a useless ally."

Davina's face fell.

"But I'd like to be a friend," said Elena. Davina looked up again. "I heard about what happened to you, what the witches did, what Klaus did, and I heard about Mikael. I thought—I suffered terribly, but I had friends with me. You should have a friend too, if you want."

Davina shot a look over at Mikael, and Elena looked too. Mikael was snarling. Elena rolled her eyes at him.

"Tell you what, Davina," she said, grinning. "I know Klaus and Elijah are going to some dinner party with the witches tonight. Why don't you and I grab dinner while they're distracted?"

Davina smiled, slowly but sweetly. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'd like that."

. . .

"Thanks for coming," Elena said the second Davina sat down across from her.

Davina was clearly nervous, eyes darting all around the room. "I wasn't sure I was going to," she admitted. "Mikael thinks this is a bad idea."

"Mikael thinks everything other than the literal act of staking Klaus in the heart is a bad idea," Elena told her. Davina offered a small smile, and Elena felt heartened. "Don't let him get to you."

"I know I can't trust him," Davina said, defiant, as though she wanted to make sure Elena knew she wasn't that naïve. "He'll try to kill me given half the chance. He's already tried."

"That must be tough," Elena said, grasping at another chance to empathize. "Being alone with him. I've had dangerous alliances, but I've always had friends watching my back."

"I have friends," Davina shot back. "It's just not safe for them to be around me."

Elena nodded, took a drink (lemonade, nothing alcoholic), and said: "I once compelled my brother to move away, for his safety."

"Really?" asked Davina. Elena nodded.

"Klaus—my friend Stefan had gone off the rails, and stolen all of the Mikaelson coffins. Stefan had also been my boyfriend until, well, until Klaus interfered—but Klaus still thought I'd be the most likely person to know where Stefan was, so he sent his hybrids to hold a reign of terror over my friends and family. After he arranged to have my brother run over with a car, and nearly succeeded, I traded him Rebekah's daggered body in exchange for my brother's safety. He agreed, but then when I saw my—my little brother—cut a hybrid's head off with a kitchen knife… I had a friend compel him to leave town. I couldn't let him live like that."

Davina was breathing heavily. "You have so much history with Klaus," she said, and bit her lip. "I don't—Klaus killed by friend Tim, but—how do you even look at him?"

"Well, I hardly could, at first." Elena shrugged. "I spent a lot of time trying to kill him, before finding out the thing with his bloodline. But—I don't know. I guess we never really had peace with Klaus, but we ended up with a few common enemies, and…we never stopped hating Klaus, but hating him became less pressing. And besides, since so many of us were vampires, having some werewolf-bite healing blood around became helpful."

"Klaus just gave you guys his blood?" demanded Davina.

Elena laughed. "Klaus could be bargained with, sometimes," she told her. "And then he fell in love with my best friend. That made him easier to manage."

"Wait," said Davina, "I—what?"

Elena sighed, leaning forward. "The thing you have to understand about me and Klaus," she said, "is that—for an entire year of my life—Klaus lived in my town. Small town life in Virginia, even smaller group of people in the supernatural know—Klaus was at town functions, parties, even threw a ball once—and we weren't at war, not the way New Orleans is. After the sacrifice, most of my relationship with Klaus was deals and bargaining and unstable alliances against other threats. We all—most of us still hate Klaus, but we all know him pretty well. It was like high school—well, it actually was high school, his sister Rebekah was in our class and joined our cheerleading team—but it was… really tense, aggressive, and hate-fuelled, but still kinda domestic." She took a breath. "So yeah, he fell in love with my best friend. They actually slept together last year—which was kind of an issue, seeing as he'd killed her ex's mother a year before, in retaliation for Tyler turning his hybrids against him—Wow." She laughed. "I guess—I guess by now, we just have so much history that—you don't forget, or stop caring, but it just stops weighing on you. There's just too much, you can't even try to work through it, you just have to, I don't know, get over it all."

Davina's eyes were narrow. "Get over it?"

She was clearly offended, and Elena took a deep breath. "This doesn't apply to you," Elena said. "Don't think that. I mean—did Klaus ever show up in costume for your high school's decade dance? Did he come to your graduation? You're in a totally different situation, I'm not—I'm not telling you to think any differently. I guess I'm just trying to explain that, well, you can't see someone as often as I saw Klaus without having to just compartmentalize all that crap so you can function like a semi-normal human."

Davina swallowed. "Is that how you feel?" she asked, sounding vulnerable again. "Normal—even a little bit normal?"

Elena smiled, wryly, knowing it didn't reach her eyes. "Not in years," she said.


	5. you look pretty sinking

Elena had waited up for the brothers, but she finally went to bed, not so much because she couldn't stay up any longer as because she was afraid that their lateness meant that Esther had done something to them, or worse, that when they returned, Esther would be there with them.

She tried very hard to put the second thought out of her mind.

An hour after getting into bed, she acknowledged that she probably wouldn't be able to sleep until she was sure that Esther hadn't killed the Mikaelsons and their entire bloodlines. She stepped onto the cold wooden floor, the summer breeze drifting in through her window and making her shorts flitter around her thighs. She picked up her phone and stepped out onto the balcony, and called Hayley.

The line was busy, but then a second later Hayley called back.

"Is Esther with you?" Hayley asked, sounding breathless. Elena's heart jumped from steadily pumping blood to pounding in her ears like a semiautomatic with unlimited ammunition.

"What?" she gasped. Her voice sounded pathetic even to her own ears.

"She's not?" asked Hayley, and then sighed. "The crazy bitch body jumped again, then vanished on me." She paused. "Are you at the compound?"

"Yeah," said Elena. "Yeah, I'm—"

"We cursed Esther so that there would be a black mark on the back of her hand," said Hayley. "No matter whose body she took. Be careful, one of us will be back soon."

Elena lowered her phone and took a deep breath, trying to lower her heart rate. Then, she heard:

"Hello, Elena."

Elena spun around so fast that her phone went flying across the room. She didn't recognize the woman, but she took a quick glance at the back of her hand, and her fears were confirmed.

"Esther," she said.

Esther smiled. "I'm sorry we didn't get to speak properly last time," she said. "Truth me told, I didn't expect you to show up on my son's arm." Esther took a step forward, so gentle Elena thought she might vomit. "Do you have feelings for him, after everything he's done to you?"

For a moment, Elena was too shocked to remember she was scared. "What?" she asked.

Esther took another step. "His twisted nature is due to his curse. He wasn't always this way, and he doesn't always have to be this way. If he were human again, you could be with him without fear. You yourself have been freed from the clutches of vampirism; surely you want the same for him."

Elena blinked at her. "I don't want Klaus to stop being a hybrid," she said.

"Don't you, though?" asked Esther.

Elena was still struggling not to hyperventilate, but she kept her voice steady. "No, and Klaus doesn't either," she said. "If you think he does, if you think he ever could, you're—" _delusional _"—really in for a disappointment."

Esther hummed, not seeming disappointed at all. "I could give you a new body too, Elena, a body free of the doppelganger curse. You could have children with no fear, and my son would have no need to keep you captive—"

"Klaus isn't keeping me captive," Elena interrupted. "I'm here of my own free will." She thought of Katherine, thought of the lost months, and instead of feeling overwhelmed by fear or shock she felt anger, boiling up in her stomach, burning behind her eyes. "And if I wanted a new body, I'd just take one. Do you even know who the original doppelganger was?"

Esther frowned. "You know that I knew Tatia."

Elena shook her head. "Not Tatia," she said, and then delight bubbled up on her tongue like champagne bubbles. "You don't know? Tatia was born a thousand years after the original one. Her name was Amara." Elena paused, searching Esther's face, but she seemed genuine in her confusion. "She was a traveller," said Elena, and saw the recognition on Esther's face. "So was Katherine, when she became human again—and I could do it too. If I wanted a new body, I'd just take one. I never would and I'll never want to, but if I did, I wouldn't need any help from you—"

The shift on Esther's face was so subtle that Elena might not have been able to notice it, had she not had fear of Esther bred into her. As it was, she only had a second to brace herself before magic threw her against the wall.

Last time she had hit her head so hard, it had started the chain of events that had turned her into a vampire.

"Well, then," said Esther. "I'm very sorry you won't be cooperating with me this time. The ability to make hybrids is one of my son's greatest sources of temptations, and as long as you offer him that power, he won't want to hear the truth of my words."

Elena's heart was beating with the fear of three different girls. She wondered how Esther was going to kill her—if she'd be thrown from the balcony, or have her neck snapped—unlikely. Her blood was too powerful. Esther would use it again, she'd be sacrificed _again_, she'd never really stood a chance—

Klaus's roar had been familiar to Elena for years, but this was the first time it had ever been comforting. Elena crumbled onto the floor and the magic was lifted, saw Klaus holding his mother by the throat, screaming "how dare you"—and then Esther was gone.

The next second, Klaus was at her side. Elena felt warm, as though surrounded in flames again, but since Klaus hadn't picked her up and sprinted her away, she figured it was just in her mind.

"Are you hurt?" asked Klaus, his voice gruff.

Elena could barely make eye contact. "My head," she whispered, after a long few minutes. Klaus touched the back of her head gingerly, then looked at his red-stained fingers and swore. He bit into his wrist and held it out to her.

Elena laughed, dazed. "It's so funny," she said, knowing her speech was slurred, "you and me. We have the…" she yawned. "The most valuable blood, in the whole world…and we're the only ones with access to the other's." She laughed again. "Kinda poetic, right? Elijah would like it, the, the…"

"Symmetry?" Klaus supplied, sounding faintly amused but pressed with worry. "Drink up, Elena."

Elena did. The fogginess and dizziness faded almost immediately, and by the time she pulled away she felt herself enough again to be afraid.

"Oh my god," she whispered.

Klaus chuckled. "Regretting your concussed ramblings?"

"Esther," said Elena, and Klaus's face sobered. "She's after me. She's really, really after me."

"Why did she attack you?" asked Klaus. "She paid Hayley a visit, but she didn't attack her, just—"

"—offered to give her a new body," Elena finished. At Klaus's puzzled look, she sighed. "She made me the same offer."

Klaus's forehead creased. "Then why was she trying to kill you?"

"I'm already a traveler," said Elena. "Or I could be. The original was—"

"Tatia?" asked Klaus.

"Amara," Elena corrected. "Thousand years earlier. Katherine could do it too, she possessed me right before her body died and stayed for months. If she had the ability, so do I. I told Esther that if I wanted another body, I could have taken one myself whenever I wanted, so her offer was useless."

"And why did my mother offer you a new body in the first place?" asked Klaus. "You aren't a vampire, love, so why does she care?"

"You need me to make hybrids," said Elena. "Dead doppelganger means no hybrids, and no future doppelganger to wait around for. She thinks if you can't make more hybrids, you won't want to be one anymore."

She didn't look at Klaus as she spoke, but when she was done she glanced up at him. He was still crouched next to her on the floor, but he was staring off into space. "She's delusional."

"That's what I told her," said Elena.

Klaus shot her a weak attempt at a grin. "What else did she say to you?"

Elena shrugged. "She insinuated both that we were in a relationship and that you were keeping me captive," she said, and Klaus laughed. "I don't understand how she could think those things could be anything but mutually exclusive, but, hey, it's Esther."

Klaus laughed again, and took her hand in his. She let him draw her to her feet, laid her hand on his shoulder when dizziness hit her, felt his hand resting on her waist.

He began to sway them back and forth. It was forceful enough that Elena knew he was just kidding around, so she laughed and let him twirl her. When he dipped her, he pretended to drop her, catching her inches before she hit the ground. She smacked his chest playfully, and he grinned.

"I'd have expected my mother to insinuate that you and Elijah were an item," Klaus said, "seeing as Tatia chose him."

Elena laughed. "Aw, don't cut yourself short," she said. "You might have sacrificed me and committed a few massacres here and there, but you're not a half-bad dancer." She giggled. "Is that how you got Caroline to dance with you? Your sweet, sweet moves?"

Klaus grinned. "Those Mystic Falls decade dances had to be good for something," he said. Something strange passed over his face for a moment. "Caroline told you?"

Elena shrugged. "Katherine was possessing me, so I don't exactly remember when and how, but yeah. I mean, we all know. Damon keeps taunting her about having a "thing for British accents", and—"

She froze, and felt Klaus freeze against her. She took a deep breath, then another, then looked up at Klaus.

"That's—that's supposed to be a good sign, isn't it?" she asked. "That means I'm—I'm—" _getting over him, moving on, forgetting him, betraying him, a bad person_—

"That means," Klaus said firmly, drawing his arm from her waist to take her other hand, "that you need a drink." He squeezed her hands, then turned away.

"Do you have tequila?" she asked as he was walking down the stairs He turned and offered her an incredulous look.

"I'm a thousand-year-old immortal hybrid, and you think I do tequila shots?" he asked. "Frankly, sweetheart, I'm a little offended."

"Everyone drinks tequila sometimes," Elena told him. "Hell, even Finn drank tequila, back around the last Mikaelson family reunion." Klaus raised an eyebrow. "He and Sage were on a date at the Grill!" she exclaimed. "Matt was working the bar, he told me."

Klaus held her pleading gaze for a moment, and then finally sighed in defeat. "I'm sure we have limes and salt somewhere around here."

. . .

The last thing Elena had ever, _ever _planned on was having Klaus hold her hair back while she puked.

"You don't have to be here," she said, through humiliation and sweat and the heightened sensitivity that came with drunkenness, the only thing that approached the feeling of vampirism.

Klaus laughed. "I can't have my doppelganger choking to death on her own vomit, can I, love?" he asked. It sounded kind of mean, but his hands were gentle as they gathered her hair into a ponytail. "Oh, don't worry, sweetheart. I rip out people's spleens on a daily basis, I'm hardly going to mind your upchuck."

"I don't puke!" exclaimed Elena, and then felt another rush coming, and leaned deep over the porcelain bowl again. When it was over, she wiped her mouth on her paper towel, and continued, "I never get this drunk! I'm not a lightweight! I know my limits!"

"Not after being a vampire, love," said Klaus. He was all too amused at her predicament. "And besides, frankly, I do take responsibility for this, er, situation. I should have been responsible and cut you off far sooner."

"Sooner?" exclaimed Elena, righteousness rising in her stomach—or maybe that was more vomit, she couldn't really tell. "You didn't even cut me off, and I matched you shot for shot."

Klaus laughed. "You certainly did, sweetheart," he said. She heard water running, and then felt a cool cloth pressed against her forehead, and sighed.

She heard the doors to the compound open and then the telltale _whooshing_ of vampires in the house, and then the bathroom door opening with a click.

"Might I ask what on earth is going on?" asked Elijah.

Elena spun around, her ponytail hitting something as it whipped around—probably Klaus's face. "Your brother got me drunk!" she exclaimed.

Klaus was laughing _again_. "You're the one who wanted tequila, love."

Elena rounded on him then. "Yeah, but you told me I needed to drink! And it was Caroline who told me I should start drinking tequila again, so you should really blame _her_." Elena pressed her eyes shut when she felt another wave. She was so not vomiting in front of Elijah.

"How much did you let her drink, brother?" she heard Elijah ask Klaus. "She's human, for goodness' sake."

"This is so Caroline's fault," Elena repeated. "I should call Caroline and tell her it's her fault."

"No, you shouldn't," said Klaus.

Elena wrinkled her nose at him. "Please, it's not drinking and dialing when it's _Caroline_," she said. "Caroline will just laugh at me. Maybe it's you who doesn't want to talk to Caroline. I bet you haven't called her since you slept with her."

"She told me very explicitly not to, actually."

"That's why you were so agreeable after your visit to Mystic Falls," Elijah mused behind them.

"So it won't be awkward that you haven't talked to her!" she exclaimed. "And Elijah and I will be on the call too. It'll be like meditation. Mediation." She picked up her phone—still cracked from the whole Esther incident—and hit Caroline's speed dial, and then hit speakerphone.

Caroline picked up after a few rings. "Elena, it's late here, I'm an hour ahead of you," she said. "Wait—are you okay?"

"Klaus got me drunk," Elena announced.

"You say that as though it was part of some malevolent plan," Klaus said, bemoaning. "I swear it wasn't."

"Klaus?" came Caroline's voice. "Wait, are you guys still drinking?"

"I'm actually vomiting," Elena informed her. "Klaus is laughing at me because I can't hold my liquor, but you're the one who told me to drink tequila, so I had to call and prove that it's your fault."

Caroline giggled. "That was a prediction, not an order," she said, but her voice wasn't stern at all. "So wait, the two of you are just calling me from the bathroom?"

"Three of us," said Elena. "Elijah's in the doorway."

Elijah, looking slightly uncomfortable, muttered a quiet greeting and then left.

"I told her not to call, Caroline," said Klaus, sounding a little pleading.

"No, it's fine, I'm not mad," said Caroline. She didn't sound mad at all, just really tired. "I'm glad you called. I've been here thinking you were just drinking alone and crying in your bedroom."

"Is that what Stefan's doing?" asked Elena. There was a silence, and somewhere past the haze Elena began to panic. "Oh my god, is he—"

"He's fine, Elena, he's fine, just annoying," said Caroline. "He took off to Savannah, he doesn't answer my calls—but he's fine." She was quiet a bit longer, and then she said: "He's a vampire again."

"What?" demanded Elena. "I thought—he always wanted to be human—"

"He wanted to turn it off," said Caroline. "I don't think it's really working—I think his switch is totally fried at this point, to be honest, after the whole Klaus's servant fiasco, and then the coffin-stealing revenge coup—but hey, what's done is done."

Elena wanted to say more but couldn't think of words, and then felt another lurching in her stomach. She swallowed. "Care, I gotta go," she said.

Caroline sighed. "If you don't let her go to sleep until she starts to sober up, she won't be hungover when she wakes up," she told Klaus. "And Elena's hangovers are like, totally miserable for everyone around her, so I strongly suggest you follow my advice."

"Duly noted," said Klaus. He sounded like he was smiling, but Elena didn't dare check in case she was sick all over him.

"Also, green tea calms her stomach," said Caroline. "Okay, I'm off to bed. Call me again soon, ok, Elena?"

"'Kay," Elena managed.

The call ended. Elena leaned over the toilet and puked again.

"I think I'm done," she moaned, and Klaus laughed.

. . .

Elena was only mildly hungover the next morning, to her pleasant surprise. It was already midday by the time she woke. She went through her usual post-drinking routine as though the whole situation wasn't beyond strange, but she did not encounter anyone else: not while she made coffee or cooked breakfast, not while she sat reading in the living room, not even when she wrote a diary entry for the first time in forever. It felt strange, putting her thoughts on paper again; more than once she became convinced that Klaus was reading from behind her, but whenever she turned to look, she was met with an empty room.

She had just eaten a sandwich alone when Klaus burst through the door. "Feeling better, sweetheart?" he asked. Elena carefully ignored him as she placed her plate in the dishwasher, and she heard him laugh.

"I'd love to mock you all day," Klaus continued, unperturbed, "but as it would seem I find myself needing your assistance in a certain matter."

"What matter?" asked Elena.

"Davina Claire," replied Klaus. She spun around, fought the urge to roll her eyes at the smirk on his face.

"You are not gonna hurt that girl," she told him, her voice low.

Klaus's smirk only grew wider. "Is that a demand, love?"

Elena did not rise to the bait. "I'm serious, Klaus. Don't."

Klaus sighed. "Very well, I won't hurt the little witch," he said. "But it's high time I face at least one of my parents, and Mikael presents the more pressing threat by far, and as such, he shall be dealt with."

"Today?" asked Elena.

Klaus nodded. "Today."

She ran her tongue along her lower lip as she thought. She wasn't willing to betray Davina, but there was no harm in hearing what Klaus had in mind. "Why do you need me?" she asked.

"Davina likes you, I believe," said Klaus. "That'll help." He didn't say anything else, just looked her up and down, and so she sighed, and followed him out to the car. The sky already looked as though it was thinking of getting dark, and she watched the city go by in silence. By the time they reached Davina's cabin—Klaus didn't even need to ask her for directions—it was night. She sat in the front seat as Klaus went up to look around the cabin, and then, seconds later, he was opening her door, his face sober again.

"Come on, love," he said, without smiling.

Klaus had started toward the house, Elena trailing behind, when she heard someone panting. She turned around as a familiar looking girl barreled straight into Klaus, blurting out something related to his father—

"Cami," Elena said, out loud. "The bartender, right?"

Cami straightened up from hugging Klaus and met Elena's eyes. "You," she said, and then—"sorry, that sounded rude, I'd just—"

"Forgotten about me?" Elena finished. At Cami's guilty look, she laughed. "No, it's, it's fine. I kind of wish it happened more often, to be honest."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself, love," said Klaus, with a slight smirk. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. "You're perfectly forgettable, you just happen to have a face that isn't."

Elena snatched her wrist away, and Klaus laughed.

Cami looked between them, and then back at Klaus. "Okay, just—whatever you do, don't hurt that girl, okay? Don't hurt Davina."

"Already had to promise that, sweetheart," said Klaus. "You have to stay back, Cami.

"Oh, it's not safe for me, but it's safe for her?" asked Cami. Elena had expressed the same sentiment way too many times.

"Mikael sort of… knows me," said Elena. "Not that he wouldn't still kill me, but—"

"He does respect your many attempts on my life, I'm sure," Klaus interrupted. "And I do value your years of experience serving as vampire bait or collateral damage."

Elena rolled her eyes, but played along. "Actually, I'm pretty sure those were Caroline's jobs. I was usually the sacrificial lamb or the martyr."

"Or the vampire morality pet," Klaus said amiably. "Ah, Mystic Falls." With that, he walked forward. Elena shot Cami a tight-lipped smile, and then followed after him.

There were a few silent seconds, and then Klaus shouted, "Davina!" There was no reply. "Davina!" Nothing. "Davina, send Mikael out!"

Elena knew her cue when it came. "Klaus, don't," she said, falling into the role of Old Elena Gilbert with the ease of donning an old Henley top. "Klaus, that's enough!"

"Elena?" she heard from the house, though she couldn't see Davina.

She could feel Klaus's smirk, as though it were a ghost that lingered in the air all around her. "No need to look so guilty, love," he said, sliding forward, "after all, you didn't tell me where she was, or, I don't know, that you even met her."

She could admire it, now, the way he could spin his voice from a roar to a murmur, from sweet cadences to poisonous threats. She swallowed, and the lines came to her as though from a script. "You don't own me, Klaus."

He turned back to her, and his eyes were shining with humour. "'Course I do, love," he said, sounding downright cheerful, and Elena did not know what to think, here, standing with Klaus, playing at being foes once again, speaking lines and playing roles that were nothing if not the truth. "You're the doppelganger."

She didn't have a classic Elena line to throw at that, so she just stood there, breathing more heavily than she had to, keeping her face as stern as she could while Klaus smiled over at her. It was a hell of a smile; it seemed to fade from humour into interest, then twist into something possessive and dangerous, the look he'd given her the first time he'd seen her, wearing Alaric's skin, that day in the history classroom before she could even know what it meant (and it looked far more frightening on his real face, and it was all she could do to keep breathing steady and her heart from racing, because Klaus would be able to _hear _it, and even though she knew she wasn't scared of Klaus the fear still crept up her spine, like an old memory she couldn't remember having), and then spiralled into something far, far darker.

He snapped his head forward again, breaking her gaze so rapidly she found herself dizzy, her vision still blurry as he picked up a long stick and looked at the handle. She could not see a single line of his face, but she could feel his anger like it bubbled up inside them both, and knew what was about to happen seconds before Klaus launched the staff at the house.

She heard glass shattering and wood breaking, and she wasn't even tempted to flinch.


	6. until somebody loses their mind

If there was one thing Elena had been very good at in her human days, it was knowing where to position herself during a fight. You couldn't be too close to the fight, obviously, otherwise someone would try to use you as leverage; but you had to be close enough to see everything and intervene if necessary. Elena wasn't sure what she could do to intervene here, seeing as she had no weapon and Mikael would not be swayed if she threatened to kill herself (in fact, last time he'd been alive, he'd used Katherine-as-her as leverage against Klaus), but old instincts came back like riding a bike. As soon as Mikael came outside, she shot Klaus a _look _and grabbed Cami's forearm and dragged her backwards to the vantage point on the edge of the trees, eyes watching intently.

"What are you thinking about?" Cami asked.

Elena frowned. "If there's a situation in which threatening self-harm will give Klaus the upper hand," she said.

Cami was silent for a minute. "…You know what, I don't think I'm even going to ask."

Elena wasn't even paying attention. She was watching the fight, her eyes trained on Klaus, when suddenly something flashed before her eyes and dizziness overtook hCami made a sound, and Elena squeezed her wrist as tightly as she could. "Don't draw attention," she whispered, sounding strangled. "I'll be fine—fine—"

She felt herself losing balance, and felt Cami grab her weight just as the world swam away to reveal another.

She was watching Stefan—not Stefan, no, _her husband_, she knew—on his funeral pyre. She could smell the flames singeing his long hair, knew she was destined to jump on and tie atop the pyre—_she did not_—

She was dancing, feathered mask atop her head, long hair sitting heavily on her scalp (hers had never been that long) she caught Elijah's eye for a second, then was spun around, Klaus's (eyes were so young) mouth was on hers, she broke away, laughing, his arms were on her waist, leading her as she danced—

She was looking at Elijah (was he still human?) and she cupped his face in her hand, "I choose you," she was saying, and she was kissing him—

Her eyes shot back open halfway through a gasp. She silenced it as soon as she was aware of it, pushed herself back to her feet, and Klaus was at her side.

"Mikael—"

"Dealt with—" Klaus replied shortly. She was still gasping for breath, and she clutched his arm as she started to sway. "What just happened?" he asked, grabbing her elbow. "You've never been prone to fainting—"

"You had long hair—" she whispered, memories swimming before her eyes. "You were kissing me—no, no, we were dancing, I was kissing Elijah—I wasn't—" she broke off, coughing. "Your mother was there—"

Klaus's grip tightened. "What are you rambling on about?" he growled, in a way that generally meant he was nervous. "I can assure you, love, you and I have never—"

"It was Samhain," she whispered, and looked up at Klaus. He was white as a sheet. "It was—we were wearing masks—"

Klaus didn't say anything, but it hit Elena like a freight train.

"It was Tatia," she said, and she was breathing too hard but could not stop. "Klaus, I was Tatia—I'm not Tatia, I'm not her, why am I remembering—"

Klaus's hand moved from her elbow to her shoulder. "I don't know," he said. "Perhaps it is some ministration of my mother's—"

"Yeah," said Elena, heart still pounding. "Yeah, it's got to be." She swallowed, and then pushed herself upright. "Okay, I'm fine, I'm fine. We should check on Davina."

She rushed inside the house as soon as they arrived, Cami with her, and crouched at Davina's side. Klaus was in the doorway. She had to admit, she hadn't missed that part of being a vampire. Davina's friend was mouthing off in a way that sounded all too familiar, and she looked over at Klaus. She wasn't entirely sure where she recognized it from, but she wasn't just imagining things. Cami left to get the car, and Elena looked over Davina. She was probably going to be fine, though Elena wished she could just feed her some blood and make sure she didn't have a concussion—

"Kol," Klaus said, and sudden horror dawned on Elena. She rose to her feet from her perch at Davina's side, first instinct to run to Klaus—except she couldn't do that, Kol was Klaus's brother.

"Looks like the jig is up," said Kol, and she could hear him in his every word. He shot a sideways glance at Elena. "Remember me, doppelganger?"

She glanced over at Klaus, who looked—almost amused? "I should go help Cami with the car," she muttered, and darted out of the house. She could hear them laughing as she left, but she was still shaken. She'd helped kill Kol, and now he was back? Klaus probably wouldn't let him get revenge on her—although Kol had never been prone to listening to Klaus's orders—but what if he tried to get revenge on Jeremy, god—"

She forced herself to breathe as she arrived at the car. She didn't see Cami—maybe she was already inside? She looked in the driver's door, then opened it, but Cami was nowhere in sight.

Elena could put two and two together. She opened the trunk of the car and found it empty.

"KLAUS!" she shouted. "Klaus, they're both gone, Mikael must have taken Cami—"

Klaus was already next to her. "Dammit," he said. "He took the stake."

They took off in silence. Well, mostly in silence—Klaus muttered to himself the entire time, but there was nothing resembling conversation. Elena did not say a word, not even when they came upon an entire party of dead bodies, clearly Mikael's handiwork, not until—

Elena keeled over, Klaus catching her right before she hit the ground. She could not pass out again, she could not, not when Mikael could be anywhere—

Elijah embracing Klaus, on the ground, a body torn apart, she gasped in horror, Elijah called her name—it wasn't her name, it wasn't—she ran off—"

She was looking into Klaus's eyes. "What was it this time?" he asked, no preamble.

"There was a body, Elijah and you, I think—I think you'd just turned into a wolf," she said. Klaus's eyes widened. "I was—I was scared—"

"I remember that day," Klaus muttered. "That was the day I found out that Mikael was not my true father." He stood, lifting them both to her feet, and she'd just stood upright when she collapsed into Klaus's chest—

"_Don't touch me_," she whispered, in the memory and aloud. She felt Klaus pull back through her haze; she grasped his shirt and pulled him forward. "No—stop—_what have you become_—"

A moment later, she was awake, but she did not move. "It's not over," she whispered, "it's coming—"

Klaus shifted so his arms were around her. She had a moment to be grateful, and then—

"_Your mother asked for my blood," _she was saying, Tatia was saying, she was looking at Elijah, she was standing with Klaus, she was— _"she said nothing of the dark magic that would turn you into a monster_—" she—no Tatia—said.

There was blood on her hand, she—no, her hands were on the soft fabric of Klaus's shirt—Elijah's face began to shift, neither she nor Tatia had ever seen that happen before—

She took a few ragged breaths.

"_No_," she gasped. She hit Elijah, he fell to his knees—she pushed against Klaus with almost no strength to her name—Elijah's eyes shifted—

"_Elijah?" _she said, and then began breathing, loud—"No, no—"

That was when she started screaming.

She couldn't help it. She wasn't sure where she was—Elijah's fangs in her neck or Klaus's hand holding her head to his chest—she screamed and screamed, she felt her eyes burn with tears, Klaus making gentle shushing sounds—it felt as though it would never end. It was nothing like when Klaus had drained her, with the precision and civility of a thousand years of experience—it was messy, she could feel Elijah's fangs ripping though her skin, she could almost imagine the bloody gash—she thought it would never end, and then it was over, and she was sobbing into Klaus's chest—she couldn't stop, couldn't pull up shame or horror at it—she could hardly remember who she was.

"I'm not Tatia," she whispered, when she finally could. "Why do I remember, why do I remember being her, I'm not—that never happened to me, I'm not—" she was gasping for breath so hard she couldn't string together a sentence. "What's happening to me?" she begged. "What's—Klaus—what's happening?"

She couldn't imagine ever wiping that memory from her mind, ever pushing down the horror—she could cope with a lot of trauma, she'd been hurt before, she'd died before, and yet nothing could compare to this memory that was not hers. She'd been so scared of what being the doppelganger meant, and nothing had been so important to her as making it clear, to herself and to everyone else, that she was Elena, only ever Elena, making sure that no one ever saw anyone but Elena—and now she wasn't only Elena at all.

She couldn't imagine coping with that, but Mikael was on the loose with the white oak stake, and so she forced herself to her feet.

She rubbed her fingers against her eyes. "We have to—we have to find Mikael," she said.

She could sense Klaus's hesitation. "You're—"

"I'm fine," she lied. "Let's go."

. . .

It was almost poetic, Elena thought, Klaus and Mikael fighting in the middle of the garage, a human standing on either side. Except, of course, that Mikael planned on killing Cami, and Klaus—while he wasn't fighting to _protect _Elena—didn't want her hurt either.

She was just wondering whether she could get Klaus any leverage when the white oak stake dug into Klaus's heart.

Cami screamed; Elena watched in horror until Klaus's body had fallen to the ground. She flung herself over Klaus's prone body, not hesitating as she moved—she'd been thrown around a lot, after all—and she had seen Originals die before. She was maybe—definitely—the only one here who ever had—she knew they weren't dead until they burst into flame, and Klaus was still cold as stone. She remembered this happening before, remembered Damon staking Klaus only for Stefan to pull him off—she knew Klaus wasn't dead yet. Maybe the stake hadn't reached his heart, maybe it was taking longer than usual to activate, for whatever reason—he wasn't dead yet.

As soon as she'd landed on top of Klaus (it was a long jump, too, and she used his body to break her fall but she'd scraped her knees something fierce), he lowered her head, making her body shake as though she were crying over him wondering if there was any way Mikael wouldn't see her move. She heard him growling, heard his steps walk past her, and dared a shot over her shoulder. He was out of sight. She shifted up, so she was straddling his chest, dug her knees into the sides of his ribcage, and seized the stake between both hands.

Pulling out stakes wasn't easy for a human, but at this point Elena considered herself a seasoned expert. Besides, it wasn't much more difficult than pulling a dagger out of Elijah. She yanked upwards, at just the right angle, and the stake came sliding out. She kept a firm hold on the stake, and shot a look over her shoulder. Mikael wasn't back yet. She looked down at Klaus, who didn't seem any closer to waking up, and, with a sigh, stabbed her own arm with the stake hard enough to make a wound that gushed blood. She heard a gasp that she thought belonged to Cami, but she didn't look to check, and instead jammed her forearm against Klaus's mouth. It was a messy wound, the drawn blood a result of pure brute force, the stake lacking the precision of a knife, but she had sliced her own neck open before. This was nothing.

She felt Klaus's face move below her, felt the distinct piercing of fangs, like she'd felt earlier that day—_that was Tatia that wasn't her_—and she let him drink for a few moments before pulling her arm away as firmly as she could. She knew that doing so worsened the wound, felt even more of her skin tearing, but she didn't care. A second later, Klaus's eyes, still bloodshot, locked on hers. They snapped down to the stake, still coated in both Klaus's insides and Elena's own blood, and then back to her face.

"I pulled it out," she said, though surely he had put it together.

He sat up, his hand moving to her waist as he did so she wouldn't fall, which meant she was now sitting in his lap. His face was terribly close to hers.

"Did you stab yourself with the stake?" he asked in a low voice.

She shrugged. "You weren't waking up," she said. He looked as though he were going to speak again, so she grabbed the hand not at her waist and pressed the stake into his palm. "Go kill your dad now, okay?" she said. He smiled, just a little, and then he was up and across the room just as Mikael walked back in. A second later, they had backup.

She rose to her feet, and surveyed the garage. Hayley and the other—Marcel, she figured—were now fighting with Klaus, and she knew she was no help over there, so she made her way over to Cami instead.

"Hey," she said, kneeling down next to Cami. "Are you okay?"

Cami snorted. "You're asking me if I'm okay?" she asked. Elena wasn't sure what she meant until Cami added, "You're the one with blood spewing out of your arm and all over the floor."

"Oh, yeah," she said, looking down at her arm. The wound did look pretty awful. She shrugged, but held her arm up, anyway. "Someone will heal it eventually."

Cami's laugh sounded surprised. "Okay," she said. "How long have you been doing this again?"

Elena laughed with her. "Um, since I was seventeen?" she said. "Don't worry, it stops fazing you."

"That's what worried me," said Cami. "I don't want it to stop fazing me."

Elena looked over at her, eyebrows raised.

"This is all terrible," Cami said, sounding half-resigned to Elena not understanding. "People keep dying, and everyone has to hurt themselves, or others—I mean, look at why we're here, because Klaus has to kill his own father so his father doesn't kill him. It's horrible. I don't want to forget that it's horrible just because it's normal. I don't want it to stop fazing me."

Elena couldn't quite grasp that—it wasn't that she didn't understand in theory, but she'd never known any way to cope except to go on with life as normal, to try and incorporate everything into her day-to-day routine, go to school and dances and on dates and invite the monsters into that.

It had always made Jeremy so angry, that she could act like everything was normal, and it had always confused her so much that Jeremy could stand to do anything else.

She didn't know how to say any of that, though, so she crouched in silence, dusting some gravel off of her bare knees. She could feel the shift in the battle before it happened, and rose to her feet. She almost stumbled but had enough self-discipline to not even waver, although her head was very light. She tried to stay at the back of the group, but Klaus reached backwards, and pulled her forward by the wrist—not the one covered in blood, thankfully. She didn't know what to make of it for a moment, and settled on resting all her weight into him. She didn't listen to Mikael, just focused on keeping herself upright and her mind off the incoming numbness.

Mikael disappeared just as Elena could no longer hold it together. She collapsed against Klaus. He caught her weight, probably expecting another onslaught of memories, and then caught her injured arm in his hand. His grip was gentle, but she still winced.

"Ah, Elena," he said, his voice soft. "All that precious doppelganger blood spilling out and not a word of complaint. I'm hardly surprised."

She tried to retort, or even shove him, but her vision was started to swim around the edges and she collapsed again. She felt Klaus's hand on her waistline, and, finally, his bloody arm against her mouth. She drank deeply, for the second time this week, until she finally felt herself again.

Klaus laughed. "Better?" he asked.

Elena wiped her mouth and smacked him at the same time. "You should be thanking me," she told him. "Doppelganger blood is a hot commodity these days."

Klaus rolled his eyes. "How you've managed to survive this long is beyond me."

"Hang on," said Marcel's voice behind her. "Did you just say doppelganger?"

"Ah, yes," said Klaus, grasping her elbow and steering her around. "You are a few chapters behind, Marcellus. Allow me to formally introduce—"

"I'm Elena." She snaked her arm out of Klaus's grip and extended a hand. "And I'm guessing you're Marcel."

"No need to say that with such dread, now," said Marcel with a grin, shaking her hand. "I will say, though, I am a bit confused. Klaus here told me that the last doppelganger had turned into a vampire, and that the line was finished." He laughed in a charming sort of way. "Went on a hell of a lot of tangents about it, if I remember correctly."

Elena allowed herself to be charmed. "I'm not surprised to hear that," she said, shooting a smirk over at Klaus. "But he was the one who was a few chapters behind. Katherine had a baby out of wedlock before she even met Klaus."

Marcel laughed. "That sounds about right," he said. He raised an eyebrow over at Klaus. "I've got to admit, though, I don't see what a fine lady like yourself is doing with the likes of him."

Klaus stepped forward. "Don't get too friendly, now, Marcel," he said, in that voice that could be a joke and a threat at the same time. "After all, she and Rebekah are sworn enemies."

"We are so not!" said Elena, jabbing her elbow into Klaus's side. "She even let me live in your house for a little while there, back when I turned my humanity off, if you remember."

"I try not to," Klaus informed her, with a fake shudder. "Those were dark days."

"Whatever," said Elena, turning back to Marcel. "Honestly, I don't know what I'm doing with the likes of him either." She smiled, and then remembered something else about Marcel, and her smile slid away. "Hang on—is Davina okay?"

Marcel tilted his head. "Pleasure to meet you, then," he said, and was gone.

"Well, you've had quite the big night, haven't you?" Klaus asked her. "I think you've collapsed more times tonight than you have since I've known you." He smirked, but Elena thought it looked somewhat forced. "With the exception, of course, of the night I drained you of your blood and you fell to the ground like a rag doll."

Elena flipped him off. "You're a dick," she told him, and he laughed.

**A/N: Thank you for reading! I love and appreciate you all! Feel free to let me know if there are any pairings (romantic or not) that you're itching to see!**

**Also, because this has been brought up in reviews over the last few chapters: I have absolutely no plans for Elena to learn magic or use magic. Elena has references a few times that she thinks there's a chance she could have some latent Traveller abilities, but that's just a guess on her part; she could have nothing at all. Even if she does, though, she has no desire to act on it. **

**Everyone's welcome to want certain stories, seek out certain stories, and write certain stories, but I just wanted to make it clear that this story is not going down that road. There is some room for flexibility in this fic, but ultimately I know where I'm going with it and what mythologies I want to explore.**

**Thank you guys so much! Until next time!**


	7. offer me that deathless death

She'd been asleep for a long time.

As always, she checked her phone when she woke up. 5:00 PM. That was only a few hours after she'd gotten to sleep, she'd thought to herself, but then she checked the date. She'd been asleep for over twenty-four hours.

She got herself showered and dressed more quickly than usual, horrified by how much time she'd wasted in bed, but once she was a person again, she realized she had nothing to do. She made her way down to the kitchen; there was a note for her left on the counter, in Klaus's handwriting.

(She couldn't believe she recognized it on sight.)

_Elena, _it read,

_Elijah is a captive of my mother's. I've gone to fetch him. You're safe in the compound. I shall text you if anything changes._

_KM_

Brief and to the point, which was so different from Klaus's usual flair for the dramatic that Elena felt dread building in her stomach. It could be that Klaus was very concise in writing, of course—while she'd seen his writing enough to recognize the slant of his words, she hadn't read much of it—but she thought the likelihood that he was being short out of stress and anxiety far, far higher. The thought of Esther filled her stomach with dread, as it always did, but she took a breath and made herself some coffee, filling her mind with trivialities to alleviate her worry. When had she started _worrying_ about Klaus, anyway?

She made herself a pot of coffee, trying to keep her head clear, and was just carrying her mug over to the table when she heard footsteps.

"You're back early," she said, taking a sip from her slightly-too-full cup.

"Hello, Elena," said a stranger's voice. "It's been a while."

Elena had enough control over her nerves by now that she could restrict her reaction to a simple hitch in her breath, which she covered by taking a swig of burning hot coffee as she spun around. She swallowed it down without flinching, tilting her head and raising her eyebrows at the newcomer. Something about the position made her feel like Katherine, but the thought was comforting—she'd always thought Katherine looked threatening, deadly, self-assured.

"Finn, I take it?" she said. Finn smiled, the look a little too predatory to be friendly. This new face was nothing like Finn's original one, but she still recognized him as soon as she looked properly, seeing the disdain, the superiority, and the clear, probing interest that distinguished those familiar with the doppelgangers from the rest of the world, the same look his mother looked at her with, that most of his siblings looked at her with—she still saw it on Klaus and Elijah's faces, more often than she'd care too—the look she'd received from all the Originals but Rebekah, really, if she thought about it.

"I thought it time you and I had a little conversation," Finn said, stepping around her and sitting himself at the kitchen table, leaving her no choice but to sit across from him. "I understand my mother was a little…forceful, when the two of you spoke the other night."

Elena shot him a tight-lipped smile. "That just about summarizes all of our conversations," she said. Finn laughed, in that charming way people did when they thought themselves very clever and very much in control. It was another clear marker of an Original sibling, although Elena had never seen Finn so relaxed, in his old body.

"Humanity suits you," she told him. Katherine would have tossed a comment about how much less constipated and angsty he looked now, but Elena did not want to escalate the situation if she could help it, did not want to make Finn any more of an enemy than he already was.

"You as well," he told her. "Much better than vampirism ever did, when I saw you wear it from the Other Side. Surely you're very grateful to be rid of that immoral existence."

Elena did not want to answer that, out loud or even to herself. "I can see that you are," she said instead.

"And yet you refused my mother's offer to move you to a new body, a body not haunted by the doppelganger curse," said Finn. "Why is that? Because this form is attractive to my brothers?"

Elena laughed. "You don't get it, do you?" she said, and she felt almost as though Katherine were somewhere inside of her—the part of her that had once turned into Katherine, in another life with different influences and choices—and she leaned forward. "It has nothing to do with your brothers. My body is my body, and I want to keep it."

"But it isn't, is it?" asked Finn, leaning forward as well. "I remember Tatia wearing that face, a thousand years ago, the same height, same voice, the same size. Your body isn't yours at all."

"It belongs to me a hell of a lot more than the one you're wearing around belongs to you," she said. "You want to talk to me about morals? You stole someone else's body, someone else's life, and trust me, as someone who's had that happen to them before, there's nothing remotely ethical about that."

Finn's fists slammed against the table, so sudden compared to his peaceful demeanor from seconds earlier that Elena did flinch, just a little. "My mother sought to offer you a new body, a new chance," he snarled, "but I don't think you deserve one. That face, that body, has wrecked havoc and mayhem and destruction, driven men to madness and murder, and the blood that courses through your veins was willingly given to create the abominations my mother turned us into, is the only thing my vile brother can use to create his foul, disgusting hybrids."

Finn was leaning forward, and there was a light in his eyes, something almost manic about the way his words tumbled out of his mouth. Elena felt as though something was clawing at her heart—people had linked her with the others because they wanted her to be Tatia or Katherine, never because— "My mother would offer you the mercy of another body, but I would see the doppelganger put to death for her crimes, I would see you bleed for what your blood has done, and now that you've refused my mother's mercy, there's no reason that I can't—"

Elena threw her hot coffee in his face, and he screamed, from rage rather than pain, she could tell. She shoved the table into him, sending him falling backwards off his seat, and she ran out and into the living room, not sure where to run to, when a hand wrapped around her waist, her back pulled up against someone.

She could tell just from the feel of his form that it was Klaus.

"Klaus, Finn," she said, and said nothing else, before Klaus growled and Finn was gone. "I'm not—it wasn't me," she gasped, so quietly Klaus would not have heard it were he a human, but she could remember, now, could remember being Tatia, could remember knowing that she'd given Esther her blood, even if she couldn't remember the actual giving of it—and then a few years ago, she'd given Esther her blood again, just like she always had, just like the doppelganger always would—maybe she really was all of them, just as much or more than she was herself—

She was still in Klaus's grip, but two seconds later he had spun her out and backed her into a wall. She could tell he was upset before she saw his face—she'd seen Klaus distraught before, but never quite like this, naked fear etched on his face, lips quivering, eyes wide and pleading.

"Klaus, what happened?" she asked, the words coming out of her mouth on pure reflex.

"My father," he said, after taking a deep breath.

"Mikael?" she asked. "Why would he—he doesn't have the stake—"

"My birth father," said Klaus, and Elena felt as though she'd been struck. She could remember the day she realized John was her birth father, could remember the shock and horror, the feeling that the world was spinning of it's axis, but she'd loved Grayson Gilbert, it had never really upset her that he was really her uncle, and she'd never felt as afraid as Klaus looked. "My birth father, he—I remember his face—Esther brought him back, I remember his _face_—"

Elena—_Elena _knew how to offer comfort, somewhere in the back of her brain, but she might not really be Elena at all—_I'm Elena, I'm Elena_, she told herself, but she was also thinking _it's all my fault_, and she couldn't, she _couldn't_ pull her mind together enough to offer comfort, not to anyone, not to Klaus, as distraught as her, pinning her against a wall and gasping as fiercely as she was, clutching her shoulders as tightly as she was grasping his forearms.

Klaus leaned in and kissed her so suddenly that her body responded before her brain understood what was happening. Elena had kissed and been kissed a lot—she knew the rhythm of it, mouth against mouth, the push and the pull of it all, how to surrender to a kiss without chasing it desperately. She could have done it in her sleep.

But this wasn't simply going through the motions. This was Klaus, the two of them were the first and the last people who should be kissing in the world, and Elena hadn't even touched anyone since Damon—and she was distraught, and so was Klaus. She didn't know who he was kissing, her or Tatia or Katherine, but something about that, the anonymity of it, the chance to not be any of them, just that girl with that face—

—and this was _Klaus_—

She reached up and crossed her arms behind his neck, languidly, letting herself lean into the curve of his hand racing down from her waist, the friction of his hipbone digging into her, right where her top was hitched up to reveal bare skin, his other hand pulling up at her shirt, thumb tracing circles under her ribcage, on her ribcage, creeping higher and higher—

—somewhere under her skin, her body knew that they had done this before—

She pulled her fingers through his hair, and she could feel a jolt, barely more than a shiver, really, course through both of them, she could feel his surprise ghosting under her breast and along the exposed skin of her neck. She had been kissing him back, but only through instinct, still passive Elena, halfway between simply letting herself be kissed and dutifully playing her part—this was a response, something active, present, decisive.

Klaus's hand ran along the underside of her leg, and then he lifted her. Her legs wrapped around him so naturally something in her must have known they would do this all along, and she cupped his face in her hands when his head tilted upwards, lips crashing into a kiss before either of them could do something stupid like make eye contact.

His open mouth ran along her neck, pausing to hover over his bite mark, that victory badge from the night of the sacrifice, so many years ago. He kissed the spot, hard, and Elena thought she would let him drink from her, would fuck him right there and then against the living room wall—

Something about this felt so ordained.

It was that thought that broke through her haze.

More quickly than she'd known possible, she was standing again, her hands flat on Klaus's chest, his gripping her forearms, and she knew that somehow, he'd had the very same thought at the very same moment. She could see her own naked horror reflected on his face, and a second later he was gone.

What was she _doing_?

"_That face, that body, has wrecked havoc and mayhem and destruction, driven men to madness and murder…"_

Elena was breathing in gasps, choking on air so violently it sounded like sobbing, was turning into sobbing—

"_I would see the doppelganger put to death for her crimes, I would see you bleed for what your blood has done…"_

She pressed a hand to her mouth, trying desperately to breathe, but her mind was flashing, she was Tatia kissing Klaus, she was Elena kissing Klaus, if she tried to remember hard enough she might be Katherine kissing Klaus. She was trembling, shaking, she didn't know what she was doing—her mind raced back to the realms of the ordinary and landed on, _I need to call Caroline and confess_, except that was ridiculous, this was far too messed up to be distilled into anything that simple.

She had to talk to someone who didn't know or care anything for the doppelgangers, someone who would just talk to Elena—

Her fingers scrambled with her phone, found a name in her contacts—

The phone rang once, twice.

"Hayley?" said Elena, hands grasping for the phone. "Are you free right now?"

…

She met Hayley at a bar she'd never been to before. It was the kind of place where they had a fully stocked bar, but you still felt like you couldn't really order anything but beer, and even though she would have liked a Corona, she ordered a Heineken.

Hayley ordered a Guinness. Elena didn't really know Hayley that well, despite having lived in the same house and dealt with the same drama for the past while—she knew a lot about Hayley, but they'd never spoken alone before, and even though she knew there was nothing between Hayley and Klaus, something about sitting with her only a few hours after… after whatever had happened with Klaus made her feel tainted, as though Hayley somehow knew, and even though she knew Hayley wouldn't care even if she did know, it didn't sit well in Elena's stomach.

She told Hayley about what had happened with Finn, about Elijah being Esther's captive, and Hayley's expression darkened. "That raging bitch and her mommy's boy really need to be taken down a peg," she said. She didn't ask if Elena was okay, and Elena appreciated it. "Did he say anything about what Esther's planning?"

"Nothing we don't know, except that he really wants me dead," said Elena. "What about you? Did you learn anything today?"

Hayley grimaced. "Just that Esther's more of an asshole than I gave her credit for," she said. She took a deep breath. "She killed a—one of the wolves today. A friend, I guess."

"Oh my god," said Elena. "I'm so sorry."

Hayley's face was still, but she was gripping her beer very tightly. "Yeah, well. It's not like we didn't know she was ruthless. She came after my baby—I shouldn't be surprised she'd kill someone she thought was a traitor."

"She needs to be dealt with," Elena agreed. "And Finn too."

"Yeah," said Hayley, and then took a drink from her beer, long enough that Elena thought she might be planning to chug the whole thing. "What about Kol? Whose side is he on?"

"Not mine," said Elena. "Definitely not. I—I helped kill him, me and my brother. Finn, too." She swallowed. "Kol had it in for me for a while, he came back from the Other Side and tried to kill me once. But I don't think he's on Esther's side, either—he'll remember last time Esther tried to kill them all, and he isn't the type to just do what Esther says."

"So he's a third party," said Hayley.

Elena raised an eyebrow. "There are a lot more than three parties in this war," she said, and Hayley laughed without humor.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," she said. "It's all way more screwed up than that." She tapped her fingers against the table. "Wasn't he with Davina, though?"

"…Yeah," said Elena. "I don't really know what that's about—I think he's really into this whole witch thing, though, and I'm pretty sure he was hanging out with her on Esther's orders, but I don't think that's why he stuck around. I think he kinda likes her."

"Well, as long as he isn't going to hurt her." Hayley said, just as her phone started buzzing. She shot a glance at it, then picked it up. "Klaus?" she said, and Elena's heart started hammering again. "What—you're taking him back to the compound?"

"Elijah?" Elena mouthed, and Hayley nodded absently at her.

"We'll be right there," she said. "Yeah, I'm with Elena."

She pulled the phone from her ear, giving it a curious look, and then shrugged. Elena was already pulling out a twenty to leave on the table.

"I don't understand," said Hayley, as they rushed out of the bar. "He said Esther handed him over without a fight, that she just wanted to talk to him, but he sounded furious and—I dunno, not like he'd just had a conversation."

"Esther brought his father back to life," said Elena, and Hayley shot her a sharp look. "Not Mikael, his birth father, the werewolf one. Klaus came by the compound, and he was… he was really upset by it. I don't know who he is, though."

Hayley groaned. "I think I do," she said, "but I kind of hope I'm wrong." She dialed a number on her phone. "Jackson?" she said into it, after a moment. "I really, really hate to do this, but… how old were the ways Ansel was telling you about?"

Elena tuned out the conversation, her mind on Klaus again. She'd had awkward meetings with people she'd hooked up with before—this wasn't about it being awkward. She'd never even _thought _about Klaus that way, she'd never wanted—she didn't know what it meant, if she was turning into Tatia, or even Katherine, she didn't know why she'd done it—that wasn't true, she knew she'd been distraught, and Klaus had been distraught, and it was easier for either of them than having breakdowns—but _god_, it hadn't just felt like searching for oblivion in sex. It felt like a realignment of her own body, as though she'd been swimming against a current forever and had finally turned around and been swept into something natural. But it wasn't natural, and fate didn't exist—she'd already been through this with Stefan and doppelganger destiny whatever crap—

She didn't know what she thought, so she focused on Elijah, dear, sweet Elijah, and getting back to him as fast as she could. She listened to the tension in Hayley's voice and the click-clacking of their shoes on the pavement, on the sound of her own breathing, and refused to think.


End file.
